It’s easy to forget, especially as a July 4th weekend approaches, how much trial and error went into the creation of American democracy. This week on Being, Krista Tippet revisits her 2003 conversation with the warm and wise philosopher Jacob Needleman. In his studies of the American founders, he became fascinated by what they took on as the “inward work” of democracy. Disciplines of conscience and virtue accompanied every institution and right that they defined. Today, as young democracies emerge around the world, Needleman offers a long view of the ingredients that formed American democracy well beyond July 4, 1776. He reminds us that America is an ongoing experiment, always a work in progress.

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Point Reyes Dialogues, originating at KWMR in Point Reyes Station, (California) explores with renowned host Jacob Needleman (author, social philosopher and commentator) the great questions of life and our current condition with eminent friends from the arts, science and spirituality, politics and public service. Jacob Needleman is host of the Point Reyes Dialogues and Sylvia Timbers is the series producer.

One of the central aims of these dialogues is to reawaken the art of conversation as a passionate work of opening one's mind to another human being. Conversation such as this is rapidly disappearing in our present world. Yet the work of 'non-egoistic listening and thinking together' is the rock upon which is based not only the American ideal of democracy, but the very possibility of ethical action in our morally and physically threatened world. Our premise is that new territories of collaboration and creativity open with the inner work of listening and thinking together, leading to ethical action in the world.

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