Conversation Week in New York
"Law and Order Style"
by Ronald Gross
How would it feel if you were involved in a great conversation every day for a week? What impact might it have on your mind and spirit?
Ronald Gross co-chairs the University Seminar on Innovation at Columbia University, where he also conducts Socratic Conversations at the Gottesman Libraries at Teachers College. His latest book is SOCRATES' WAY, published by Tarcher ( www.SocratesWay.com ).I tried to answer that question during Conversation Week 2008, March 24-30, a global initiative spearheaded by Conversation Cafe and Global Mindshift . (My personal thanks to the Gang of Six: Vicki, Lorie, Susan, Leif, Kern, and Alan - for their incredible inspiration, guidance, and support.)
If you'd joined me on the streets of Manhattan during that week, here are a half-dozen examples of what you would have seen and heard - "Law & Order" style. So cue up that staccato Ba-dum.
Ba-dum! Monday, 10:45 a.m., on the steps of the NY Public Library on Fifth Ave. and 42nd Street.
I held against my chest a bright yellow placard that read: LET'S TALK, NEW YORK! (This rhymes - but only in New York!) ™ ®
Once four people had been enticed to sit down on the steps, I handed out The Ten Questions, which had been suggested to groups worldwide for Conversation Week discussion. Our little group gravitated to #8: "What Kind of Leadership Does the World Need Now?"
This being NY, one of the group, Jules, already had the ANSWER - which he kindly provided to the rest of us so that we could save ourselves a lot of valuable time.
To which one of the others responded brusquely (this being NY): "WHOA!, amigo! I've got more to say about that!"
By this time three others had latched onto the group, and all of us went at it. I introduced my wristwatch as a "Talking Object" - it can be any item that's handy, and that can be passed from person to person. When you are holding the Talking Object, you have the floor, with no cross-talk.
Over the next 70 minutes, the composition of the group kept changing, as those who had convened at the start, got on with their afternoon (hey, it was COLD out there). At one point we noticed that a guy in a wheel-chair was really interested, but couldn't come up the steps, so we moved down to the sidewalk. Most of the time there were half a dozen people involved, and the ones on the outskirts had to wait to elbow their way in.
Among the leaders mentioned were John Adams (whose HBO series had just finished), Moses, Queen Elizabeth, Jack Welch, Hilary Clinton, Franklin Roosevelt, Malcolm X, Mayor LaGuardia, Bill Moyers, Al Franken, and mobster John Gotti (this being NY).
And the ideas about leadership that were expressed included jargon-free versions of just about every theory I could recall from the literature, including the Great Man, Innate Traits, Participative, Transformational, Situational, et. al.
Towards the end, one person summed it up wiht a telling local reference: "Remember what Rudy told us after 9/11? He said we should Go fuckin' SHOPPING!' What crap! What he shoulda said was: Get together to TALK about how we should think about this, and what we should do!"Ba-dum! Tuesday, 7 p.m., in the Public Space Atrium of the IBM Building at 55 th Street and Madison Avenue
This conversation had more "infrastructure": a towering three-story-high atrium, a red balloon, and a miniature bust of Socrates.
To draw people to our table in the vast Atrium, our host, Evan Sinclair, lofted a red balloon which I had lifted from a bouquet of them outside a deli where I had picked up my sandwich for dinner. As a dozen disparate New Yorkers arrived via the atrium's several entrances, there was a clatter as they dragged the metal chairs across the concrete floor to crowd around one of the café tables. This group meets there every Tuesday night as a "Socrates Café".
After some preliminary schmoozing, the group chose Question #10: What Can We Do to Reduce or Eliminate Violence in the World?
We took our turns as Evan passed around his version of the Talking Object: a miniature bust of Socrates (was that guy homely , or what?) (Socrates, not Evan!)
For the first hour, the group discussed an array of causes and remedies for violence. Then, we drilled down, distinguishing four different kinds of violence ranging from law enforcement to psychological derangement.
A high point of the session was an account by a former teacher, Sheila Desmond, of how she set up a Peace Table in her classroom at the UN School, to encourage youngsters to develop their capacity to resolve disputes themselves. The teacher only settled the dispute as a last resort.
At one point, someone peered at the Talking Object as it was passed to him, and asked how Socrates himself might have handled our question of how to reduce violence. I observed that he DID, in at least three ways: in the dialogue, the Laches, where he discusses it with an Athenian general; in his own Apology , in which he argues, facing death, that it is better to suffer violence than to commit it oneself , and in his view that Dialogue, itself, is an "agon" (conflict) in which proponents of different ideas "duke it out", verbally.Since this group meets every Tuesday evening, it was evident that some of the themes of this conversation would be carried forward to the following week.
Ba-dum! Wednesday, 4 p.m. , in the Gottesman Library at Teachers College, Columbia University, on 20 th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue
Here, the group felt keenly that we were part of a global initiative, because upfront on a giant plasma screen I was able to display the world map with the "pins" designating sites around the globe where CW groups were meeting.
As a Talking Object we used an antelope rib from the Lakatons, to emphasize the roots of this device in the "councils" of Native Americans.
The group chose question #1: "How Can We Best Prepare Our Children for the Future?" Immediately, a contrast emerged between one participant, I-Ching, a master practitioner of media-based teaching, and two other educators who stressed the need for children to have hands-on, person-to-person learning. In this case, the Talking Object served us well by preventing us from getting ensnarled in this issue at that early point in the Conversation - rather, we moved the rib around the circle to give everyone an initial opportunity to express their viewpoint.
When everyone had been heard from, we returned to the important issue of digital vs. visceral. We all agreed that we were better-positioned to address that issue, now that we could discuss it in the perspective of the diverse views in the group, rather than to have had the session "high-jacked" by it right at the start.
People spoke from personal observations and experiences. "Some parents today are working so hard to make ends meet," Othia observed, "that they don't have the time their kids need." She told of a pair of young parents she knows, who recently had the experience one night of each running off to a meeting after dinner, with neither one remembering, until they got downstairs, that their child was sitting in the dining room in her high chair!
This anecdote provided "feedforward" to a follow-up meeting of this group, on the theme of Consumerism in our lives today.
Ba-dum! Thursday, 6:30 p.m. , in the back room of the Bamiyan Restaurant, 26 th Street and 3 rd Avenue.
When I arrived, I had to grab one of the last remaining chairs. The large back room was already filled with over twenty participants, ranging widely in ages, accents, interests, decibel level, energy, and professional expertise. This was a special Conversation Week session of Bernard Roy's Café Philo, which meets twice a month in a lovely Afghan restaurant. Here, participants can savor not only food for thought - but, food! The Café Philo is based on a Parisian model, but it tracks back to Plato's Symposium , where Socrates and his pals dialogued over victuals and potables (Symposium means "with drink").
This group had chosen its topic in advance, to that participants could ponder it during the preceding week. In characteristically bold fashion, they chose the question of questions: "What is the Most Important Question to Discuss Now, for You?"
The proposed questions ranged from "What should I change about my life, and how?" through "Can and should we control Evolution?" to "How can we get more participation of individuals in our civic life?"
These questions were then each examined in greater detail - and were captured as a Question Bank for future detailed examination by the group.
Host Bernard Roy noted pointedly how the conversation revealed that in many cases, we differed crucially in our interpretation of one or another of the questions proposed.We all agreed that this insight -- the importance of making sure in the initial stages that the question chosen for the evening is clearly understood at the start -- will improve future sessions of the Café Philo.
Ba-dum! Friday, 3:30 p.m. , Lunch Room at Brutal Software, 15 th Street and 8 th Avenue
"Brutal" is a software start-up in Silicon Alley, New York's scruffy counterpart to Silicon Valley. (I've altered the firm's name, because I work for them as a consultant on their notorious HR problems.) The Lunch Room consists of vending machines offering the high-caffeine sodas and sugar-heavy candies favored by IT people, and a micro-wave.
My friends at Brutal kindly invited some others in the building to join us for a "brown bag" to discuss question #2 from the list of ten: "What Does Sustainability Look Like to You? How Do We Get There?" (This choice was triggered by one of the truly BIG news stories of the week: that a "piece" of the Antarctic ice cap seven times the size of MANHATTAN, broke off! That seems to have stirred speculations about "sustainability" in the minds of these Gothamites!)
The conversation started sluggishly, until I reached down the table and grabbed a distinctive Talking Object - a big red bottle of Heinz ketchup. "This reminds me of what happens sometimes when you're trying to start conversation," I said: Shake and shake the ketchup bottle - none 'll come, and then a lot 'll!).
Among the issues discussed were global warming as it affects islands like, say, Manhattan, and possible measures to address the issue, like a Congestion-Pricing scheme for automobiles recently proposed by the Mayor.
Towards the end, one of Brutal's neighbors mentioned how they are reaching for "sustainability" right in their office two floors down by introducing new energy-saving and recycling measures - which prompted one Brutal exec to say: "If you're doing that in your shop, maybe we should be too." This session reminded me of Margaret Mead's remark: "Never underestimate the power of small groups talking together, to change society. It's the only thing that ever has."
Ba-dum! Saturday, 7:40 a.m. , at my desk having a second coffee, online at Global Mind-Shift, completing a week-long web-based conversation on Violence.
We had spent half an hour early each morning throughout the week - six of us texting in online asynchronous (not at the same time) conversation, sharing our reflections on Violence. We had shared our life-experiences spanning the globe, including Ester de la Fuente in Geneva and Ted Howard in Kaikoura, New Zealand. And I had brought some of their thoughts to the Atrium group discussing the same question (as in the World Café model of going to a new table).
Now, it was time to acknowledge the invaluable perspectives we had discussed, such as the work of Marshall Rosenberg, which was a touchstone for others, but new to me. Together, we had also elicited some poignant hopes and troubling anxieties, which felt good to share.I had spent much of the week talking with people of different ages from 13 to 81, most social classes (except the really upper!) every style, and diverse circumstances.
As you've seen, such encounters can take place anywhere - from the front steps of a building, to a luxurious library, to an office building atrium, to the back room of a restaurant. They can work with an ad hoc group of 6, to an RSVP group of 25. They can involve a hand-printed sign or a giant plasma video screen.
What's crucial isn't the Who, Where, When, or How. It's the WHY!
So WHY is it worth doing? How did this Conversation-rich week affect my mind and spirit? Mainly, with new Questions!
1. Who are "we the people"? These Conversations changed my "mental map" of the culture and community in which I live. The diversity and vivacity of my fellow conversationalists on the steps of the Fifth Avenue Library, for example, gave me a richer and more accurate image of who "we" are, My "we" is still a parochial one by global standards, of course - but I am working on that, by reading what others from around the globe have reported to the CC website about their conversations on the same topics.
2. What are the issues? These Conversations deepened and broadened my understanding of the Ten Questions. In the Atrium dialogue on Violence, for instance, what I heard from others made me realize that the roots of violence in our psyches are much more recalcitrant than I had been assuming, and would therefore require a wider range of strategies than I had thought.
3. Why is talking together important? These Conversations heightened my conviction of the value and necessity of engaging in Big Talk. I often say at the end of a Conversation Café, that it's worthwhile if we leave not with answers, but with more questions. But why is that so serviceable?! Because without such constant challenges to our assumptions and habits, we tend to slide into thoughtless ruts. For example, in the session at the Columbia Library, on preparing our children for the world, people remarked at the end that the session had impelled them to question some of the ways they were behaving with their kids.
4. What does conversation do for your brain? These Conversations have kicked my brain up a notch. I've got more thoughts, more interesting thoughts, and more inter-connected thoughts on such subjects as Sustainability, discussed at Brutal. My news intake is more informed and pro-active. In conversation with friends and associates, I'm more receptive, and have more pointed things to say.
5. Who's worth talking to? These Conversations have opened my heart. Constantly hearing new voices, new stories, new accents, new perspectives, new ways of thinking and feeling, has affected how I relate to people. I find now that I assume that every new person I meet may have something interesting and valuable for me, and that it's well worth the time it takes to elicit it from them.
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We want to hear yours - and share them back out to inspire more people to join in the adventure in 2009. Drop an insight onto the www.conversationweek.org blog for your questions. And drop us a line with any other exciting news about the results of Conversation Week. Starting April 24, you can join an online conversation to think together about how Conversation Cafes, Conversation Week and Global MindShift can contribute much more powerfully and creatively to a shift from arguement to inquiry throughout the world. How can we together we create a culture of conversation globally? Create a shift from impotence to engagement as citizens? Enliven our minds, hearts and souls through our conversations? We hope every one of you will participate because we know that you, the hosts, know more than we do, the organizers, about what will make this come alive.
Thanks from the organizing team to the host team - you - globally!