Gathering with a group of strangers to tackle important societal issues through conversation, not confrontation, is the premise for the 4th annual Tallgrass Festival of Ideas, planned for central Iowa next weekend.
Nathan Beacom is executive director of the non-profit Lyceum Movement, which is hosting the event. He says a roster of ten diverse thinkers, writers and scholars will offer short talks to spark the audience to participate.
“We’re in a time where public conversation, disagreements can get really heated. We want to promote healthier ways of talking and coming to the truth together, even when we’re coming from different angles,” Beacom says. “At the Festival of Ideas, we’re not talking about the hot button things on a policy level, but a 30,000-foot look at the big questions about human society and human life.”
Speakers will include the dean of the Drake Law School, a writer at The Atlantic, and a concert pianist, and Beacom says the list is intentionally curated to bring out a diverse range of topics, including history, art, and philosophy.
“Everybody is asked to approach other people with a certain generosity and a certain level of understanding,” Beacom says. “The goal isn’t to try to beat somebody in an argument, but to learn and to understand where people are coming from with their ideas and to sharpen your own ideas and understandings of these important questions.”
One focus of the two-day conversation will be “The Pursuit of Happiness.” He notes, we’re all seeking happiness, but does anyone ever really find it? Our nation’s framers didn’t try to guarantee happiness, just the pursuit of it.
“That’s one of the open questions — what does happiness mean? What did it mean to the people who wrote those words in the Declaration of Independence? What are we supposed to do as a society or community to promote that search?” Beacom says. “Even if we don’t reach some endpoint necessarily, that people have the liberty and the opportunity to try to pursue that goal that we all have.”
The Festival of Ideas is being held in Des Moines on Friday, August 7th in Sheslow Auditorium at Drake University, and Saturday, August 8th at The Shop, at 901 Cherry Street.