THE GLOBAL BRAIN TRUST

Well, here is where some of us nd ourselves, this Wednesday evening in late September: in the Grand Ballroom of San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel, at the kick-off dinner of the State of the World Forum. It is a distinguished company, including retired diplomats (George Shultz and Zbigniew Brzezinski), Nobel laureates (Guatemala’s Rigoberto Menchu and the Bell Labs physicist Arno Penzias), science popularizers (Carl Sagan and Fritzjof Capra), movie stars ( Jane Fonda and Shirley MacLaine), rich guys (Ted Turner and David Packard), New Age gurus (Sam Keen and Deepak Chopra), and many more — 500 in all, leading lights from business, politics, religion, and the arts. Such an extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge and spiritual insight, had not been seen in a single room since Bill Moyers dined alone.

And at the dais, making welcoming remarks through an interpreter, is Mikhail Gorbachev. With his Forum co-chairman, James Garrison, Gorbachev has hand- picked the invitees, most of whom have paid $ 5,000 to attend. It is now almost 111 p.m. Dinner has been served, the plates cleared away and little candles cast sleepy pools of light across the crystal, showing the lipstick smudges and fingerpaints made greasy from the beef medallions in shashlik marinade.

Gorbachev has been talking for 5 minutes, in low tones followed by the high- pitched, stuttering translation of his interpreter. He is still pointing out people in the audience. Here’s his good friend George Mitchell, and over there is his even better friend Alan Cranston. Five more minutes pass. In the dark the seated figures begin to fidget. And here is Thabo Mbeki, deputy president of South Africa, another good friend. Jane Fonda, head lowered squats out of her seat, does a duck walk to the exit. At length Gorbachev seems to be winding down. The audience leans forward, poised for an ovation and hasty retreat. Gorbachev takes a breath. “And now,” he says, “my colleagues have suggested I give a broad overview of our current world situation.”

And over the vast ballroom the realization presses down like a damp blanket: He’s just getting started.

Yet no one dares follow Fonda to the exit. For another half hour or longer he goes on, displaying a public-speaking technique refined over years of addressin g iron-butted apparatchiks in endless Central Committee meetings. Bromide falls upon bromide. “There are profound layers among the interfaces of politics, geopolitics, and philosophy,” he says. Will he list them all? In the general catalepsy no one stirs.

And one can’t help but wonder, there in the dark: Why not? What mysterious centrifugal force, beyond politeness, keeps the forum-goers in their seats? What impels Gorbachev to drone on, and his listeners to listen, here in a grand hotel, six years after the breakup of the Soviet empire?

Over the next four days Mikhail Gorbachev, along with Sam Keen and Ted Turner and Deepak Chopra and the rest, make the answer plain: They are busy creating a New Civilization — for all of us. And a little boredom is a small price to pay.

This is the first step in establishing a global brain trust,” Gorbachev said that night, and the New Civilization is its top priority. This was merely the $ Ifirst State of the World Forum. The brain trust plans to meet at least once a year through 2000, with Gorbachev as convener. In the four years since he felt the boot of the Russian people, he has gathered the experience necessary to serve as the brain trust’s nucleus. He travels the world these days as an international sage, attending forums on the 21st Century, the Future of Democracy, Democracy in the 21st Century, the Democracy of the Future, the Future of the 21st Century, and other stately themes. A global infrastructure of foundations, philanthropists, corporate interests, and academic institutions sustains him and picks up the tab.”

It is a good life, as he says himself: “I have many things to keep me busy.” One of those is the Gorbachev Foundation, which he co-founded with Garrison in San Francisco and Moscow and which sponsored the State of the World Forum. Another is the International Green Cross, of which he is president. Having led the most environmentally profligate empire in history, Gorby in retirement has gone green. Apocalyptic environmentalism is the creed that undergirds the global brain trust. “A new civilization would mean, above all, solving the problems that exist between man and the rest of nature,” he told Audubon magazine last year. “If these problems are not solved, the rest is nonsense.”

For Gorbachev and his fellow “brain trusters, environmentalism satisfies several heeds at once. It is quasi-religious, allowing for talk of values and ” the spiritual.” “A revolution has to take place in people’s minds,” he likes to say. For its adherents and even its distant sympathizers, the implosion of communism left a void; ecological alarmism fills it, for like communism it is a unified field theory of social organization. And just as important, environmentalism encourages Gorbachev and his colleagues to sustain the moral equivalence that was their chief rhetorical safeguard during the Cold War. The “global ecological crisis” proves that capitalism as well as communism has failed.

“Now that we are rid of this syndrome of imposing the communist model on people,” he told Audubon, “I have to tell you Americans that you’ve been pushing your American way of life for decades. There has to be a different approach. Americans have to be more modest in their desires.”

Perhaps most important of all, environmentalism allows Gorbachev to speak in just such big, blowy tropes. He has mastered the alarmist platitude. He is a global Polonius. “There is a sweeping crisis that threatens our civilization,” Gorbachev told the Forum, more than once. “The most profound need is to move away from a technology-centered to “a culture-centered way of living We must change the nature of consumption so that it is geared toward our cultural needs. With the growing scarcity of resoures, we must focus on the need to control the global process.”

For years, commentators speculated on Gorbachev’s intellectual development, as he worked his way through the classics of Western political thought: from Aristotle to the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers, through Lincoln and even to Hayek. He has finally come to rest, on the Whole Earth Catalog.

Gorbachev’s global brain trust relishes its variety, drawn as it is, self- consciously, from the fields of business and religion, science and politics. Participants were brought to the Fairmont for a series of plenary sessions and roundtable discussions. The themes were Gorbachevian — New Indicators for Measuring Sustainable Development; Facing the Planet’s Carrying Capacity; Ecology: The New Science of the Sacred; and many others As these grand themes were chewed over, the variety of the participants’ backgrounds was meant to result in unexpected synergies of insight.

On close inspection, however, he variety of the brain trust looks less variou s. David Packard and Ted Turner notwithstanding, the businesfolk tend to airy j ob descriptions — “specialists in international empowerment strategies” and “c onsultants'” in such corporate shakedown rackets as “environmental performance” and “disability compliance” The politicians are all out of work: Brian Mulroney , Jim S asser, Gorbachev himself. Most of the scientists labor in “New Science”; Rupert Sheldrake, for example, though once a biochemist at Cambridge, has spent the last several years working on a “morphic field theory of the mind,” which aims to prove that the “sun is thinking.” “Religious leaders” are almost exclusively Buddhist, Vedantist, or Shirley MacLaine. The rest of the participants were drawn from what they call “civic society,” a euphemism for non-profits. Peggy Dulany, to cite one case, is spending her legacy as a Rockefeller scion on squatter camps in Latin America Michael Murphy, the founder of the Esalen Institute has been investigating the mystical experiences of golfers.

Among those in the brain trust, however, there is still room for paradox, if not friction. Early Thursday morning, at the start of the first plenary session, I sat in the press pen, listening to keynoter Thabo Mbeki, the former South African ANC activist and now Nelson Mandela’s number-two. He deplored, gently, the sparse African presence at the Forum, insinuating that there might be a First World bias at work. At that moment, Ted Turner plopped down next to me, seeming agitated. Turner tore open his copy of the day’s New York Times$ N and turned at once to the Business page. A banner headline read: “Turner Pay Deal Said to Top $ 100 million.”

“Will the poor of the world be able to participate in our agenda?” Mbeki asked from the podium.

Turner read with furrowed brow, his finger tracing down the page: “As the new vice chairman of Time Warner, Mr. Turner is to receive a five-year compensation package worth well in excess of $ 100 million.”

“Will they have a say in the growing gap of wealth in the world?” Mbeki wondered.

Turner kept reading: “Add that to the $ 75 million in salary, bonus and long- term compensation . . .”

“Will they continue to be left behind in the communications revolution?” Mbeki said. His voice rose, but Ted didn’t appear to be listening.

The nettlesome contrast recurred. The corn-producer Archer Daniels Midland underwrote the Forum for $ 250,000. No company is so intent that the Third World achieve “sustainable development.” And not a penny more than $ Isustainable — surely not to the point where those countries start exporting corn.

ADM is a conservative entity that feints left; among the brain trust, the process more often runs in the other direction. Garrison, Gorbachev’s co-chair and the man who brought the brain trust into being, declined to be interviewed at the Forum. But a recent profile in SF Weekly revealed his career to be a kind of synecdoche for the American left and its evolution over the last 20 years. In miniature, it is the story of the brain trust itself.

Garrison is a slight man; short as Gorbachev and half as heavy. His tailored suits hang straight down from his shoulders. Though 44, he looks a few months shy of getting his driver’s license. He has the quiet air of a divinity student, which he once was. He studied at Harvard, then at Cambridge, where he earned a Ph.D. under the radical theologian J. A. T. Robinson. In the mid-70s he became active in the anti-nuclear movement, chaining himself to bulldozers outside Midwestern power plants. He later fused his spiritual interests with his activism by helping to found the Christic Institute. The Institute gained notoriety as the chief publicist for the “Secret Team” conspiracy theory, which characterized the Cold War as a fraud imposed upon a peace-loving planet by a shadowy team of American intelligence officers.

Slowly, as the Left eroded under the Reagan terror, Garrison felt the tug of commerce. Throughout the 80s, as a freelance peacenik, he traveled often to the Soviet Union and established contacts within the Politburo. His Rolodex swelled. “I could leverage my contacts to meet a Kissinger or a George Shultz,” he told SF Weekly. “I became important because I could deliver important Soviets.” When communism collapsed, he parlayed his network of friendships into investment opportunities.

He organized U.S. speaking tours for Gorbachev, Eduard Shevardnadze, and Boris Yeltsin. His investment-consulting firm, based in San Francisco, flourished with deals in the former Soviet bloc. In the mainstream at last, he even ran for Congress, and is now said to be eyeing a Senate race.” Today he is a very wealthy man, perhaps the only operator in the world who’s on a first- name basis with both George Shultz and New Age healer Deepak Choprfi — an embodiment of the New New Left.

He is also enormously competent, a virtue seldom associated with people who c hain themselves to bulldozers. The Forum was a massive logistical enterprise, a nd it operated with the elegant precision of a Swiss railroad. Staffers with wa lkie-talkies and earpieces quietly guided participants from event to event. Ses sions never ran overtime, unless Gorbachev wanted to say something. Meals were prepared by celebrity chefs, including Wolfgang Puck, and diners were serenaded by New Age musicians gently playing their dulcimers and tablas and bells.

For the American Left, the introduction of New Age spirituality is the most significant development since the trial of the Scottsboro Boys — or at least since the divorce of Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden. (It is always “spirituality,” by the way, never “religion”; and never, God forbid, “God.”) A Vietnamese monk was on hand to instruct participants in meditation techniques. Drawing on his huge bestseller, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, Deepak Chopra spoke of the seven levels of consciousness in one room, while New Economists outlined the Love Economy in the room next door. Gorbachev himself spoke freely of ” transforming human consciousness.” In the press room, reporters from Earth Times and Disarmament News did yogic stretching exercises, emitting little moans. A makeshift bookstore sold CDs like “Sacred Healing Chants of Tibet” and “Exploring he Cosmic Christ” and books like Jesus, CEO: Using Ancient Wisdom for Visionary Leadership.

Aside from Garrison himself, no one understands this final, decadent phase of the Let better than Danny Sheehan, a well-known pohucal activist who, like Garrison, was one of the founders of the Christic Institute. On the last day of the Forum, I buttonholed him outside the Grand Ballroom.

“A couple of things can come from this Forum,” he said, in his breathless manner. “Like I was in the bathroom just now. And I saw Ruud Lubbers [the former prime minister of the Netherlands]. I was on a panel with him — and just now I called him ‘Ruud.'” He calls Gorbachev “Michael.” First names.” So there’s a friendship thing happening. The statespersons get to be friends with the New Scientists who get to be friends with the spiritual leaders who get to be friends with the statespersons. This is potentilly paradigm-impacting.

“Since the end of the Cold War, we have a brief window here where we can undo all the old paradigms. You know there’s the old NewtonJan, Cartesian paradigm-units of matter colliding in space like Ping-Pong balls. All our present institutions are based on that rationalist model. But we’ve known since Heisenberg and the ‘uncertainty principle’ that this paradigm isn’t true. It’s not accurate. There are no ultimate integers of matter, just networks of potentialities. Everything is ultimately related to everything else. No absolutes.

“So what we’re saying is: We must build our public policy-making institutions on this” new view of what reality is.”

I said, “Wow. Is Gorbachev on board with this?”

“I’ve spent enough time with him to know that he has a genuine insight into the spiritual dimension. He’s not comfortable talking about it. But he’s very into it.”

All of which could sound sort of scary, until you factually watch our new global brain trust in action, or non-action. Its main product is talk — working papers and action plans, emphasis on the papers and plans. Still, the great unanswered question of the Forum was the practical one: How to impose this new view of reality, how to create a New Civilization?

I left Sheehan and walked into the final plenary session The next morning Gorbachev would host his friends George Bush and Margaret Thatcher, neither of whom attended the Forum proper, for an hour-long roundtable broadcast by CNN. But this plenary on Saturday afternoon was to be the official summing-up.

The ballroom was packed. Each roundtable discussion group had a leader, and one by one they made their way to the dais to present their findings to Gorbachev and the assembled brain trust.

Alan Cranston, once a U.S. senator from California, went first. Over the previous four days he had led a group in discussing “The New Architecture of Global Security.” Under the pitiless stage lights he looked like a woodcut by Edvard Munch.

His roundtable had produced eminently practical suggestions, he said. A ban on nuclear testing. Enlargement of the U.N. Security Council. And allowing people to vote for their country’s U.N. representative. He finished to polite applause.

Then came Sam Keen, the men’s movement maven who was discovered by Bill Moyers. His roundtable had discussed “The Global Crisis of the Spirit.” The solutions to the crisis: “A re-enchantment of the world.” “Stopping the colonization of the spirit by commercial interests.” And one other idea: “If we cut the world’s population by 90 percent, there won’t be enough people left to do ecological damage.” The ovation shook the chandeliers.

And so it went. At last Stephen Rhinesmith — identified as a “specialist on global business strategy implementation” — rose to close the session. “For four days,” he said, “we have lived together, talked together, hoped together.”

In the ballroom, several brain trusters held hands. There was silence. Rhines mith offered “four action steps — things we can all do as we move from this pl ace.” They were: 1) Think of what it all means to you. 2) Think about what we can do as a community. 3) Think about what “we can do as representatives of the people we represent.” And 4) Think of what we can do as participants in the global community.

None of these, of course, is really “a thing to do,” and from this fact the rest of us can take comfort. Imagine the problems the global brain trust would present for the world if it had stormed from the Fairmont agitating to nationalize the banks or institute mandatory bedtime.

That, or something similar, would have been the agenda a mere decade ago, before the fall of the Wall, when the Left was in full flower. But for now the braintrusters seem content merely to interface among themselves.

After the thunderous applause for Rhinesmith, people got up to go. Gorbachev, godfather of the New Civilization, seized the microphone. “I have a two-minute comment,” he said. I left the ballroom 20 minutes later. He was still talking.

By Andrew Ferguson