Last Saturday, April 11, was the fourth TEDxConnecticutCollege conference. The event was produced by the students of Connsider, a campus club that puts on events with the aim of engaging people in discussions. Though TEDxConnecticutCollege is perhaps its most visible event, the club puts on others with this same aim of “debate,” including a recent partnership with Green Dot, said member Ben Ballard ’16. The group’s goal of getting the campus community talking was reflected in this year’s conference theme: genius loves company.
The day opened with a talk by Sonia Magano, a seventh grader at Waterford’s Clark Lane Middle School who also spoke at TEDxYouthDay2014 last semester. Her talk, entitled “The World Through Open Eyes,” was about the stereotyping of different cultures and cultural awareness. Magano focused more on “company” than on “genius” in the sense that she wanted to discuss people’s connections to, dependence on and responsibility to fellow human beings.
Bob Safian, editor-in-chief and managing director of the magazine Fast Company, offered a different perspective in his talk entitled “The Secrets of Generation Flux: How to Thrive in Chaos.” He discussed what he called “generation flux,” which is both the environment of fast-paced change that we are in now, and the people in that environment who are most able to succeed in it. The members of “generation flux” are not related by age, but rather by their mindset and attitude. “The most important skill in the age of flux,” Safian stated, “is the ability to add new skills.” This ability allows for success in today’s jobs, jobs that no one quite understands: F.I.O., also known as “figure it out,” jobs, he said.
In “Mythologies of the Artist-Genius,” Professor of Art History Christopher Steiner focused not on the production of art but instead on its reception by art historians, museum curators and others. From this angle, “the question of genius is not an objective truth. It’s not a measurable fact,” he said. It’s socially constructed in relation to race, gender, power, class and other factors. “How exactly do you see genius?” Steiner asked. Historically, “seeing genius” required what’s known as “the gifted eye” of art historians. Genius, then, is not a matter of individual talent or skill. “It’s a way of packaging or presenting art to a general public,” he said.
“The next time you are shown a … work of art,” he said, “close your eyes. … Look beyond your own preconceptions [and] … dismantle that social construction.”
Walker Cammack’s ’16 talk, based off of his experiences spending summers foraging for wild mushrooms and selling them to chefs, examined the loss of American food culture. “There is a connection there: between wild mushrooms and great food,” Cammack said. Cammack believes that through foraging for mushrooms, we can find and recreate our food identity; foraging can remind us that making food is a process. “The goal,” he said, “is to make us conscious eaters again, and also reconnect us to the natural world” so that mushrooms are not part of an “unseen, mysterious world.” They shouldn’t remain unseen: “they’re everywhere,” and we should “connect” with that world.
Ali Rice ’15 started her talk “In Good Company: the Multiplicity of Emotional Vulnerabilities” by suggesting that “genius loves good company.” She went on to suggest ways to be in good company and ways to be good company. The key she said is “emotional vulnerability: honesty plus exposure.” Honesty alone is not enough; one needs to stand to lose something in order to create a community. Being “vulnerable with somebody” promotes “bonding” with that person; it creates company. Being vulnerable with other people “is the most beautiful, and powerful, and important way to live,” she said. It creates community by ultimately making both yourself and those around you comfortable.
In his talk, entitled “Conflicted about Conflict,” Ramzi Kaiss ’17 asked, “Do we have to follow up on news of conflict around the world?” He said we currently don’t know much about events happening in countries and cultures other than our own. The media’s coverage of those events depends upon whether those cultures are considered “Western” or “non-Western;” events in non-Western countries garner much less media coverage than events in Western countries do. After tracing how his answer changed over the course of various personal experiences, he argued that we have a responsibility to follow up on news of conflict. “We don’t care [because] we don’t know,” and if we don’t learn, our apathy will continue. “The true company that genius needs,” Kaiss said, “is a desire to know.”
In two separate talks, Stephen Hallquist, Postal Assistant at Conn, and Professor of Religious Studies David Kim discussed the role of love in creating communities. Hallquist, like his father, is a minister, an occupation that he can trace in his family back to the fourteenth century. Because of his father’s occupation, Hallquist was moving every three or four years growing up. Moving made it challenging for Hallquist to become part of a community, and he realized the importance of “search[ing] for common ground … [through] learning how to dialogue [sic] … with people.” Learning to communicate with other people effectively, Hallquist said, “is always a matter of proactive forgiveness and proactive love.”
It is just this question of deploying love in order to create social change that Kim discussed in his talk “Radical Love.” We live, he said, in “deeply cynical times,” where “we can not be with another, [when] we can not be with ourselves.” We live, too, in racist times, when “the culture tells [some people] that [they] are less than human.” What are we doing about it? What can we do about it? “How do [we] close that gap [in people’s perception of others’ humanity]?” he asked. “[We] have to start with small gestures.” We need to be aware of what others are seeing. “Who are [others] seeing, and who are they not seeing?” Who are we seeing and not seeing?
We can’t give into cynicism and we must find hope because “to live in a loveless world is to be unfree,” Kim said. To extend your humanity to another is “an act of moral genius, it’s an act of affective genius.”
An instance of extending humanity to others is exactly what Professor of Sociology Ron Flores’ talk was about, which, appropriately, he gave together with members of the Eastern Pequot Tribal Nation and some of his students. Collaboration during weekly Sunday meetings between Flores and his students and members of the Eastern Pequot does “the work of community,” which needs to happen every day, not just [the proverbial] yesterday. “Understanding and appreciating diversity, building community, happens every day.” It is “not always fun. [It is] not on TV,” he said. It is an exchange of historical and cultural information that aims to educate both native people and the general public – because it’s only through some form of education that we recognize others’ humanity.
These talks about the responsibilities of company reinforced how conversation aids understanding. TEDxConnecticutCollege itself does this. It is “a platform for honesty” that offers different, sometimes contradictory views,” said Marina Sachs ’15, who was involved in producing the event. It, just like the stories that it enabled this year, requires that those involved work together. It is only through this working together, as the Connecticut College and Eastern Pequot collaboration demonstrated, that we can begin to see the invisible people. And we need to see them, we need to hear their stories, for “we are bound,” as Kim reminded the audience, “in a network of reciprocity based on our common humanity.” •
