Incubator of ideas generates heat, light : A foundation guided by former Monkee Michael Nesmith tries to bring together diverse thoughts, personalities.

A linguist, a scientist, a journalist and an artist gathered at an idyllic adobe retreat house here recently to identify a critical issue facing humanity.

They emerged to inform several dozen guests that most of the world’s ills can be traced to problems with learning.

“The solutions begin with the lifelong human capacity to enjoy and share the process of learning,” the four said in a statement. “Learning must become a means to bridge social fragmentation. Finally we need to take responsibility for the way we act on our learning.”

You could tell the 1996 Council on Ideas was having a ball.

They made their presentation and took questions in a small gallery hung with the work of artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Louise Nevelson and Mary Cassatt. Lingering by the door was the moving spirit behind the council, Michael Nesmith. A star of the 1960s TV series “The Monkees,” Nesmith in recent years has recorded solo albums, produced pioneering music videos and released the cult favorite “Repo Man.”

As president and treasurer of the Gihon Foundation, endowed by his late mother, Liquid Paper inventor Bette Graham, Nesmith has guided the council’s evolution since its inception.

Always the thinking man’s Monkee, Nesmith, 53, says the council grew from his love of ideas and recognition of the need to discuss them.

“There’s a moment in which some idea galvanizes all of us,” he said. “When I and the other [foundation] trustees set up this program, what we were trying to do is create a forum where maybe that could happen.”

This year’s panel included Mary Catherine Bateson, a respected linguist and anthropologist; Alan Kay, an Apple Fellow instrumental in the development of personal computers; Colorado artist/entrepreneur Todd Siler, who is developing multimedia learning materials; and Roberto Suro, deputy national editor of the Washington Post and an expert on immigration issues.

The members reported they began hashing out ideas on the ride from the airport, a process that continued throughout that Saturday. They talked while sitting around a conference table or strolling the grounds.

“It was a little excruciating,” Kay said, “but the thing that was fun is that everyone had goodwill.”

The council identified its topic almost without meaning to.

“It happened almost at the outset,” Suro said. “It started without trying to formalize anything, and this conversation developed. There was not a moment of silence.”

The discussion did not hew to a set agenda. “It went around and around and up and down,” he said. “It was a great luxury.”

Bateson was asked to write a first draft, which was later refined to everyone’s satisfaction.

“It isn’t that we agreed that learning is a good thing, like motherhood,” Bateson said. “I think we all agree there is a new kind of urgency. The institutions that prepared people to live in a stable, unchanging community worked pretty well. But the situation we are in today is one in which the willingness to learn and keep on learning is critical in a new way.”

Graham endowed the Gihon Foundation in 1976, four years before her death. Nesmith shared his mother’s dedication to “entrepreneurial philanthropy,” the notion of taking an idea and developing it for the public good. Sorting through her papers after her death, he found a note in which she designated the Gihon Foundation as the “idea” foundation. “From that seed, coupled with entrepreneurial philanthropy, was born the Council on Ideas,” he said.

Nesmith and the foundation’s trustees decided each panel should include three to five members drawn from diverse backgrounds. Each council would meet for one weekend every other summer, at the end of which it would write a brief position paper.

A 50-person selection committee screens nominees and selects several panels. “It’s kind of like putting together a good dinner party or rock and roll band,” Nesmith said. “You have to pay attention to each person’s strengths.”

Council members have no particular mandate, other than to submit a report at the end of three days.

There is no mechanism to turn the panels’ recommendations into reality, or even to bring them before a wider audience. The question of whether any of this is worthwhile is something Nesmith agonizes over.

“Philanthropy for me necessarily includes proof of usefulness,” he said. “Going out there and giving $5 to every person I see would be a curious exercise if I didn’t have some idea it would lead to something.”

But Nesmith says he is sustained by his faith that the council will somehow serve society.

“I’m putting a seed in the ground,” he said. “I can’t look anybody in the eye and say what the outcome will be. I’ve got this gut feeling that by doing that, something will happen.”