WOSU (not-aired)

I was privileged to attend my very first Chautauqua Institution this year, an event that has been going on in upstate New York since the 1870s.

On the shores of Lake Chautauqua, just eight miles from Lake Erie, Methodists founded Chautauqua as a summer camp, which grew into Sunday School teacher training which, by the 1880s, led to educating attendees on all varieties of secular subjects as a part of its mission: the exploration of the best in human values and the enrichment of life by exploring important religious, social and political issues – and to find creative responses to those issues.

Nowadays, the Chautauqua Institution runs a nine-week program, which includes daily lectures by internationally renowned speakers. Also, writers, and visual and performing artists participate in residency programs providing a daily dose of cultural arts.

Surrounded by beautifully maintained Victorian buildings, the woods and water, listening to dissertations over foreign policy, followed up by the Opera and art exhibits – well – as someone who values stimulating conversation, expert insight and creative expression; I felt I was as close to heaven as an ex-Methodist-turned-atheist could get.

Chautauqua is a highly restrictive gated community, planned as such by the founders to maintain an educated, middle class attendance – the type of people who were given less to the high spirited revivals of the time that ironically were what originally led to the institution’s creation.

The founders wanted attendees who would engage in a sedate, non-denominational, moral community oriented program.

As you might imagine, a gated community in the splendor of upstate New York, is, well, financially exclusive no matter if it is 1880 or 2011. Many of today’s Chautauqua property owners are third or fourth generation. Nothing about the institution is inexpensive.

So, while you may not have a good representation of economic classes, you do find a wide diversity of political economic ideals – this isn’t just for us liberals.

However, at Chautauqua, extremely restrictive ordinances as well as polite conversation over normally polarizing topics are accepted as de rigueur. And that’s what struck me. Why does it take an exclusive, gated community in the woods to bring people together for community like this?

It feels almost schizophrenic to me to live this way at Chautauqua, almost on a higher plane, only to return home to what is clearly a less civilized daily existence.

And why is it, that members of similarly educated (and financially capable) communities – like Dublin or UA – find local issues so divisive and support for publicly sponsored cultural events so scarce? Why are our interactions often so crass and our attitudes so frequently self-serving?

I want to live in a world more like the one I experienced at Chautauqua, sadly, unless the desire for such a society spontaneously takes hold in central Ohio, I’ll look forward to next year, and another brief glimpse of that higher plane of civility.