Dear Unknown Friends:

We are in the midst of serializing the great 1974 lecture Long Ago for Liking the World, by Eli Siegel. In it, he is illustrating a principle central to Aesthetic Realism, which people need desperately to know now. The principle is: the deepest desire of a person is to like the world through knowing it. Further, this desire is in a fight with another huge desire we have, the most hurtful thing in us and humanity: contempt, the desire to glorify ourselves by making less of the world, people, and things. How much we can respect ourselves, how well our mind works, how truly civilized a person we are, depend entirely on how much we’re going after authentic like of the world rather than contempt.

In the lecture, Mr. Siegel uses instances from a book of 1891, A Literary Manual of Foreign Quotations, compiled by John Devoe Belton. As he discusses these—with clarity, grace, depth, kindness, sometimes humor—Mr. Siegel is showing that many statements humanity has cherished affirm that tremendous need in us to like the world.

Also in this issue is part of a paper from an Aesthetic Realism public seminar that took place early this year: “What Gets in a Man’s Way—the World or His Own Ego?” The paper is by Aesthetic Realism consultant Ernest DeFilippis. It’s principally about love. It’s courageous and exact and can get the thrilled respect of both men and women. The purpose of love, Aesthetic Realism shows, is to like the world itself through a particular representative of that world. I can’t state that principle without adding that my own gratitude for learning it, my gratitude to Eli Siegel for teaching it so magnificently, is unlimited and deeply equivalent to my very life.

Love & the Economy

Today, even during a pandemic and amid terrific distress about money and jobs, people’s confusion about love goes on. Inseparable from the purpose of liking the world is good will for a person and people. And Aesthetic Realism is the body of knowledge showing that the big matter in both love and economics is the same: should the basis of our amorous actions and thoughts, and also the basis of how a nation’s wealth and jobs are had, be good will or ill will? Should the economy of a nation, and should a kiss, be based on good will or the ill will of self-aggrandizement?

Fifty years ago, Mr. Siegel explained that the world had reached the point at which economics based on seeing people as instruments from whom to squeeze profits could no longer succeed. The profit system had failed, no matter how much various individuals might try to prop it up. He was right. People have increasingly objected to what profit economics has done to their lives. Now, through this terrible pandemic, amid so much suffering, people are becoming even clearer, swiftly and intensely.

They see the chaos, weakness, and cruelty of a hospital system and pharmaceutical industry based not on what people need but on profit for a few. They see the horrible use of government money to subsidize corporate owners rather than to be just to the American people. As men and women throughout the land form long lines to get to food pantries, as a staggering number of US workers are being rendered jobless, many with no prospect of future work, millions of Americans have come to feel that economics in our nation is fundamentally un-American—that it is unjust. They are right. Our economy needs to be based on the honest answering of this question, asked by Eli Siegel: “What does a person deserve by being alive?” And it can be; that would be the true American way.

Every Person Represents the World

Discussing people’s big mistake about love and sex, Mr. Siegel wrote these beautiful sentences—which are true about economics too:

To know a person is to know the universe become throbbingly specific. It is always the universe on two feet, with two eyes, and an articulate mouth. It is the universe we want to skip.

Every person is the universe, because the structure of the world itself is ours: the oneness of opposites. Every person is, for instance, at once individual and related, tumultuous and orderly, many and one, continuous and surprising. In terms of economics one can say: since every person comes as sheerly from the world as anyone else, and stands for it utterly, the world should belong to not just a few but all.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

Can a Sad Truth Be Told Well?

By Eli Siegel

The next quotation is from Horace, from the First Satire:

Quanquam ridentem dicere verum / Quid vetat? But what hinders us from telling the truth in a smiling way?

If a truth can be indefinitely gracefully expressed, what does that say about the nature of truth? Even the truth about a sad thing can be said beautifully. That is in all the arts. There are sad paintings. Grünewald is seen as more beautiful even today than Maxfield Parrish. Why is a sad thing in art beautiful? And what does that say about the world?

Horace, along with Aristotle, is a critic of ancient times who is remembered. And in his Art of Poetry, in his Satires, there is again and again the statement or the implication, in Horace’s Latin, that a sad thing can be said in a way that is graceful and beautiful, without in any way tampering with the sadness. What does that mean? Does that say something about the opposites, and also that the world can be liked without one’s being dishonest? So we have this question of Horace: “But what hinders us from telling the truth in a smiling way?”

As Latin went on, there were many sad things expressed. The saddest is a description of man, given by Virgil: “pulvis et umbra.” But the phrase itself is very beautiful: “dust and shadow.” The statement of Macbeth goes along with that: “Life’s but a walking shadow.” What does it mean that this very sad thing can be put beautifully? Does that fact say anything about the world as possibly liked or needing to be liked, or that there’s a deep desire for that in man? The chief thing is that no matter what a person felt consciously, there was something in one that wanted to like the world and be proud of the way one went about it.

On page 203 there’s a proverb from the French, with Belton’s translation:

Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner. To understand every thing is to forgive every thing.

So if there were more understanding, would things be less liked, or more liked? One of the most beautiful things in the world is that statement of Saint Paul, in the New Testament: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face.” Would this understanding make for more like of the world? Or where we do like the world, is it because we are able to evade what shouldn’t be seen?

The statement from the French that I just read is one of the kindest: “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.”

What Gets in a Man’s Way?

By Ernest DeFilippis

Exhausted after driving nonstop all the way from New York, I pulled into St. Pete, Florida. The day before, I’d gotten a letter from my girlfriend, Susan, who lived there—saying that she thought it best we no longer have to do with each other. I was frantic. I thought, If only she saw me again, she’d see her mistake and, with tears of joy, exclaim, “Oh, Ernie,” and run into my arms—we’d have sex and all would be well. That picture of her adoring me propelled me as I drove those many grueling hours, a testament to my passion for her. Meanwhile: what she felt, why she didn’t want to see me anymore, what she missed from me, were not in my mind at all.

Without calling Susan, I went directly to her apartment, thinking I’d happily surprise her. But when she saw me she was shocked and distressed; “What are you doing here?” she asked angrily. My heart sank. I knew it was over. In disbelief, humiliated, I stood there not knowing what to say. And when I left I said to myself, “She doesn’t know what the hell she wants!” But though I saw myself as hurt, I also felt I was cold and selfish. Some months earlier she had criticized me, saying I wasn’t sensitive to her feelings; yet instead of wanting to know, I had defended myself. I felt I was run by something that made me despise myself and I didn’t know how to stop it.

What I was desperate to know, I learned from Aesthetic Realism: the thing that got in my way as to love and made it impossible for me to respect myself in relation to women, was my ego, my contempt. Contempt is “a false importance or glory from the lessening of things not oneself.” And I learned that my desire for it was in a fight with my deepest desire: to know, be affected by, be fair to the world. There is nothing more crucial for a person’s life than to distinguish between these two completely opposed directions in oneself. And in Aesthetic Realism consultations I was learning how.

I was thrilled to see that the things I was proud of and loved doing arose from my desire to like the world. That’s what impelled me, for example, on the ballfield as I loved bursting into a run after hitting a line drive down the left field line, tearing around first base at full speed to get to second, then letting go utterly—flying through the air—as I dove headfirst into second just ahead of the throw. Or, as I worked to bring out the rich depth of the grain in a piece of combed oak in my work as a cabinetmaker. Or, as I happily worked to find just the right word to describe an event I was writing about to a friend. Or, when I let go on the dance floor, trying to be at one with the beat in Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man.”

I also began to see that I had a determination to be unmoved, intact. How often I dismissed a person’s feelings! I remember sitting at the kitchen table as my father would talk excitedly, maybe about a project he was working on at his job: I’d tune him out and think about something else. Coming to see that it was this lessening of other people which had made me feel so cold and empty, I felt—to my everlasting gratitude—something I’d never experienced: the joy and power of identifying contempt in myself and criticizing it!

There Has Been Cowardice

One of the things men have been cowardly about is a woman’s criticism: we haven’t wanted to hear it. In a class early in my study with Eli Siegel, I spoke about my anger with women. At the time, I was interested in a woman I’ll call Linda Gordon, and I felt things weren’t going well: that is, she didn’t approve of me in a way I thought was my due. Mr. Siegel asked me, “What is your opinion of how Ms. Gordon is with you?”

EDeF. I don’t like it.

ES. Do you think she’s just leading you on—or is she honestly trying to see what she feels? Is it uncertainty or malice?

EDeF. I would like to think it’s malice.

ES. I’m trying to have you understand….You feel Ms. Gordon has to like you, and you are determined.

As Mr. Siegel was explaining my bad determination—to have a woman on my terms—he was also explaining what it would mean to have a beautiful determination, one that would get a woman’s respect as well as my own. He said:

ES. Ms. Gordon feels you want her to be delivered to you without your going through all the critical work necessary, all the work of your getting her love or esteem. If she saw a certain avidity to know her, she would honor it. You say, “Be mine first, I’ll study later.” Should Ms. Gordon trust you?

EDeF. No.

ES. You’ll suffer from that.

This was true. I had suffered—because even as I had so often seemed to get women’s approval, I had felt something was missing. I never felt they trusted me, and it made me very unsure of myself. Now I asked, “What would it mean for Ms. Gordon to trust me?” And Mr. Siegel explained: “To have good will for her and be proud of having good will. Which would you rather do, win or understand? It’s more important that Ms. Gordon believe in you than that you win.”

I thank Mr. Siegel for enabling me to see that the thing that got in my way, that interfered with my being the person I wanted to be and honestly caring for a woman, was not the world or the woman but my conceit. He taught me that what I and every person most wants is to have good will, which he has defined as “the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.”

I’m enormously grateful to be studying good will with the woman I love, my wife, Maureen Butler. I want her thoughtful, humorous, tenacious, and ever so sweet opposition to my ego. And I’m proud to work to deserve her love—to strengthen her, encourage her to be increasingly the person she hopes to be.

In an Aesthetic Realism Consultation

A field in which men have been run by their ego is sex. Under the guise of passion for a woman, men have been brutes. Mr. Siegel said to me:

Right now there are quite a few men who are tired of talking to a woman and want to grab her. Would you like to stop thinking about Ms. Gordon and grab her? Grabbing is the desire to stop intellect from working in a woman because you think it’s boring. You want her to become like a palpitating bird.

In a recent Aesthetic Realism consultation, a man I’ll call Gary Travis was learning how that way of seeing was in him. Some months earlier he had met Maria Gianetti, whom he was coming to care for very much. In the consultation he was critical of himself, saying, “I see I’m more interested in having sex with Maria than in knowing what’s on her mind. There are times when I want to have sex and she’ll say, ‘Let’s talk for a little bit,’ and I get annoyed. I think, ‘Well, we’ll have the conversation after we have sex.’”

We asked, “Why do you think she wants to talk?” And he said, somewhat irritated, “She likes to speak to me about her day and things that come up at work she’d like to understand better, and also speak about my day.”

Consultants. And you see that as less important than having sex?

GT. Yes, at times I do.

Consultants. So you want to have sex when you want it and you see her feelings as interfering?

GT. Yes, I guess that’s the way I see it. I try to think if there’s a way I can make it sound nicer than how I’m describing it.

Consultants. That’s the trouble; you do want to make it nicer than it is—when, in fact, you’re dismissing what she feels, which is who she is. What effect do you think it has on her?

GT. I don’t think it has a good effect. I’m beginning to see what you mean.

Consultants. It’s ill will, and has a deadening effect. It makes for resentment: “He’s not interested in what I feel.” It kills feeling.

Gary Travis was thoughtful as he said, “I don’t want that to happen.” We asked, “Are you proud of how you use sex?” “No, I’m not,” he answered.

I quoted a statement of Mr. Siegel that explained why I had been so disgusted with myself for how I had used sex: “You feel,” he said to me, “it would be a big victory if you took all the thought out of sex.” I learned that to want to take “the thought out of sex” is to obliterate the person you are close to and what she represents: the world itself. It was the reason I’d felt such an aching emptiness and dullness after sex, and a feeling of separation from everything, including the woman I was with.

In TRO 1715, Ellen Reiss writes:

Aesthetic Realism explains that our desire for sex will come either from a desire to see value in the world, to honor and be affected by its meaning; or from a desire to have a victory over the world. That is always true: sex is about how we see the world, and a person we may want to touch represents the world.

I’m so happy to be in the midst of studying that kind, exciting principle. As I talk to Maureen and hold her in my arms, I want to be affected by her meaning, and the world’s. It is wonderful and utterly romantic.

We asked Mr. Travis, “Do you think Ms. Gianetti wants to respect herself? Can she really be afraid of making less of herself through sex?” “I don’t know,” he answered. “Is her feeling about that real to you,” we asked: “does it matter to you that she like herself?” “I don’t think I’ve seen it as real,” he said thoughtfully. We explained: “The main thing is: to have good will, to feel that whatever you do, whether in how you talk or how you touch a person, you are making that person stronger.”

The next time we spoke with Gary Travis he told us, “I’m very grateful for my last consultation. It’s an amazing representation of the kindness of Aesthetic Realism. It had me see the ill effect I was having on Maria. Last week she said I’m kinder and more thoughtful. It created more love and kindness between us.”