Dear Unknown Friends:

There is no more important question for America and the world than How should people see other people? What should we want from a person—and from ourselves as to that person? This question, these questions, are immensely intimate: they’re about our domestic life, social life, amorous life. But they’re also crucial—for example—to how our nation’s economy will fare.

In this issue we publish part of an Aesthetic Realism lesson conducted by Eli Siegel. Having the lesson were a man and woman, a couple, who wanted to understand the trouble that was taking place between them: why they resented each other and felt wounded by each other.

Amazingly and logically, Aesthetic Realism shows that the fundamental fight within us as to a person we’re close to is the same as the fight that is central to economics. And in both instances, this fight is about the world itself—and is between contempt and respect: Do the world and other people exist for me to manage, conquer, use to glorify and aggrandize myself? (That is contempt.) Or should my purpose be to know—try to see honestly and lovingly what things are, understand ever more deeply and truly another person and other people? (That is respect.)

About our closeness to a person, Aesthetic Realism explains, magnificently, what nothing else does: “The purpose of love,” Mr. Siegel wrote, “is to feel closely one with things as a whole.” It is to like the world itself through knowing a particular man or woman. However, most people see love as a person’s making them superior to everyone and everything, and enabling them to get rid of the world in cozy triumph. But as a result of that fake notion of love, the two people come to look on each other with anger and also shame. They don’t realize it’s because they’ve collaborated in being untrue to the purpose of their lives: to see more and more meaning in things and people. In going after a spurious victory together, they’ve evaded their obligation to each other: the knowing, and being known by, a person who, while so individual, comes from and stands for the world. This knowing and being known is the real ecstasy of love.

Mr. Siegel showed that the economy of the last half-century or so has been like a relationship gone sour—a relationship that will never fare well unless its purpose changes. The American economy, like love, needs to be based on justice to all people and reality. It can no longer be based on the ability of a few people to use the world and others with contempt, as a means of one’s own self-aggrandizement.

The beautiful lesson presented here represents how Eli Siegel was always. His own desire to know was without limit. We see something of his kindness, his humor. His passionate justice to reality itself was the same as his desire to be fair to the delicate depths of every individual.

—Ellen Reiss, Aesthetic Realism
Chairman of Education

But There Is More

From an Aesthetic Realism Lesson

Conducted by Eli Siegel

Eli Siegel. So, Ms. Bowen, where does Frank Penly look askance at you now?

Jessie Bowen. He feels that I can say one thing at one time and then act a different way.

ES. You’re trying to fool your public? —Which sometimes consists of only one person?

JB. I think I am.

ES. So what are the returns?

JB. The returns are that I haven’t convinced him and I haven’t convinced myself.

ES. All right. But is there a desire in you to keep people guessing?

JB. Yes, there is.

ES. What is it based on?

JB. A feeling that I can manage any situation myself.

ES. Every human being already can keep other people guessing simply by being a human being: no person can be summed up just like that. You don’t have to try to keep them guessing. If you look at a poodle, you’ll find that there’s mystery there. And the poodle doesn’t have to try to keep you guessing: simply by being, the poodle will have the unknown about him or her. But to want to keep people guessing—unless there is the good of humanity concerned, which sometimes happens—is really contempt for the world.

JB. Quite often it comes from an almost militant feeling in me: that somebody thinks they’ve summed me up and I’ll show them they haven’t.

ES. But do you think events wouldn’t allow that summing up?

JB. I don’t quite understand.

ES. Take, for instance, your friend Craig Melton, who’s here. He summed up his wife, Dena Melton. He also summed up his mother. Then he found that events gave him the lie.

Craig Melton. Right!

ES. Do you think something will occur showing that it wasn’t good to sum the person up?

JB. I think likely so.

What Would Be Best to Do?

Eli Siegel. The other aspect is: if there is a complacent feeling in somebody, what would be the best thing to do—instead of doing that which would make the person worry about you?

Jessie Bowen. To see where there might be truth in what they’re thinking—why they came to that opinion?

ES. I think the best thing is to say to the person, or hope to say to the person, something like this: “I have tried to sum up people too, and I don’t think it was very wise.” Then, if you know the person very well, you can ask: “Have you tried to sum me up?” Take Frank Penly. Has he tried to sum you up?

JB. Oh yes.

ES. What is the drive that makes people sum up?

JB. When they can’t easily conquer or understand something, it’s easier to just sum it up!!

ES. Now, you don’t need to be so melodramatic. Why did the woman say once, in the plains of Nebraska, to the stars, “Oh, little stars, I have you”?

JB. Because she got a power for herself.

ES. No. She wanted to be comfortable.

JB. Oh.

ES. The other way of getting comfort is to use a discomfort to know. Why do scientists go after new things? Because they’re uncomfortable. To know this but not know that makes one uncomfortable.

Meanwhile, many scientists have also summed up. In aesthetics, people have summed up. Some people felt music officially ended with Haydn. Then Beethoven came to insist, just about the time Haydn died, and people were very uncomfortable. So there was a lot of criticism of Beethoven that wasn’t so good, and he had to wait for a new generation, or at least part of one. The tendency to sum up—that is, to think this is all and to be comfortable there—is great.

JB. Mr. Siegel, I felt that very strongly when I saw the play Galileo. It showed summing up on a very large scale.

ES. The history of culture is the history of unsuccessful summings up. The motto of reality is: But there is more! If you look at certain books you will see “Revised 1919, 1923, 1927.” When the book was first written the author didn’t think it would need so many revisions.

So people sum up. Comfort and power are very much related, but people want power because it gives them an aspect of pleasure. There are two aspects of pleasure: one is comfort, which is the more static aspect, and the other is being able to do things, or the motion aspect.

JB. Should you really be able to say you’ve not summed up anything?

ES. I don’t see the necessity of summing up. You work with numbers; I’d say: Don’t do anything to a person that you wouldn’t want to happen to statistics.

JB. Okay.

The Source of His Summing Up

Eli Siegel. Meanwhile, the summing up by Mr. Penly is more than academic. Do you believe he does it out of malignity?

Jessie Bowen. I like to. But I also think there might be something that I do that encourages the summing up.

ES. The purpose of summing up is to have things pat. The reason for it is the same as the reason there are shopping bags: you have it all in one place. And insofar as it has contempt in it, it’s malign. But contempt is a notable way of getting to comfort if you feel the subject is either above you or below you. Which do you prefer?

JB. Below me.

ES. Of course. You want to be master of it, don’t you?

JB. Oh yes.

ES. Sure. We like to be masters of every subject: “I summed him up as soon as I came through the door. I saw what was going on. I took it in.”

JB. And the more difficult it is to sum up, the more frantic we are.

ES. It isn’t just the difficulty. It’s how close it is. People are not now interested in summing up the political situation in a place that seems very far away, because it doesn’t matter to them. It has to do with how close the matter is, and there are varying degrees of imminence or emergency.

So as to Mr. Penly, who do you think is a more insistent summer-up, you or he?

JB. I can feel that he is.

ES. But would you say that your attitude toward people is the best yet?

JB. No.

ES. Do you think there’s been a tendency in you to sum people up?

JB. Yes, there has been.

ES. There are, however, certain questions one can ask which always can stop you from summing up. What is one of those questions, the chief one?

JB. What does that person really think?

ES. It’s in my poem “Ralph Isham, 1753 and Later”: I ask, “What was he to himself?” If you ask that question, you can’t sum up a person. That’s why the getting within a person is so necessary. I wrote in that poem many years ago: “What was he to himself? / There, there is something.” It still is something.

In what way does Mr. Penly sum you up that distresses you?

JB. One thing is, he has a way of dealing with me as if I haven’t changed at all and that it’s ridiculous to think that I will change that much more.

ES. That’s just being wrong. Being wrong and summing up are related, but summing up is always the giving of limits.

Well, Mr. Penly, since you’re here, is what Ms. Bowen said correct?

Frank Penly. Uhh, yes.

ES. On what do you base it?

FP. I think I base it on the inconsistency that I see in her.

ES. And how is the “it” based on the “inconsistency”? If a person is inconsistent, she may be inconsistent in a good way. An inconsistent person is that much harder to sum up. If you’re fickle, you’re harder to sum up than if you’re devoted.

You have some complaint about Ms. Bowen, and I can’t think of a better time when you could utter it.

FP. The largest complaint, I think, is that she doesn’t want to see me fully.

ES. All right. But when a person says another doesn’t want to see him fully, he’s interested in two matters: one is flattery and the other is comprehension. The two get mixed up. Do you believe that, in your impetuous way, you have mistaken comprehension for flattery, or flattery for comprehension?

FP. I could. I didn’t see that before.

ES. Well, don’t you want flattery?

FP. Yes, I do.

ES. What we are is what our desires are, and the nature of them. We have desires that don’t make sense. They’re corrupt, they’re hurtful, they’re unwise. And chief among these is the desire to be praised without being understood, or to be praised for the wrong thing. If you know somebody, you look for a certain amount of approval. There’s a certain unconscious quota, and if we don’t get it we can be angry. Have you gotten your quota of approval from Ms. Bowen?

FP. No, I have not!

Griefs & Desires

Eli Siegel. Your griefs, Mr. Penly, have come because you looked to a person for a certain kind of approval and that approval failed you at a certain time, and you got angry. But we can make a fuss about not getting something the nature of which we don’t know at all, or know very little. Do you have, to yourself, incoherent but insistent desires?

Frank Penly. Yes, I do, Mr. Siegel—that describes it.

ES. And if they’re not satisfied, you’re angry?

FP. Yes.

ES. And Ms. Bowen doesn’t satisfy them?

FP. That’s correct. She doesn’t satisfy them.

ES. Now, if there is something you deserve and you’re sure you deserve it, it’s right to feel your desire for it should be satisfied. But it also happens that we have desires which it is not good for us to have, desires that are inaccurate. And these are in the field of flattery. The unconscious motto of most people is: A friend is a person who makes us better than we are. That’s one definition of a friend. Another is: A friend is a person who will defend us even when we’re not worthy of it.

FP. Is that second kind related to trying to fool one’s public?

ES. Yes. When we fool a public, our purpose is to have ourselves accepted, or something representing us. A salesman, in misrepresenting a certain soap when he tells you it can also cure your eczema, sells himself wrongly too. You give to something a value which may be wrong, but you’re hurt if it’s not accepted. And this not being accepted at a value we have in mind—even if we can’t give that value a definite form—is a cause of trouble.

And There’s Respect

Eli Siegel. Do you think it’s good for a person not to be respected entirely?

Frank Penly. I’m not sure.

ES. It is.

FP. It’s good for a person not to be respected entirely?

ES. Surely. A person who should be respected entirely is a person who has a little thing called absolute perfection.

FP. Oh, I see.

ES. On what other basis should a person be respected entirely? To respect a person—the beginning of it, as I’ve said often—is to see that that person represents reality in a way nothing else can. A person is himself or herself, and also represents reality.

You feel you’re not respected sufficiently.

FP. That’s right.

ES. On what basis do you want to be respected more?

FP. I’m not sure, Mr. Siegel.

ES. Well, on what basis do you miss something from Ms. Bowen?

FP. I don’t know.

Jessie Bowen. I know. There’s a way I can be with Frank—both pro and against—that can give him the feeling I am the only person who should matter to him and he is the only person I have on my mind. He might feel I want to see him only in terms of myself and don’t grant him a life away from that.

ES. Is that a little true, Ms. Bowen?

JB. Yes, Mr. Siegel, I’m afraid it is.

ES. I’ll tell this anecdote. A person went to confession and he was there for fifteen minutes (which is a lot, I hear, for confession), and then as he went out he sort of thrust out his shoulders and said, “Now I can be entirely respected!” People want to be entirely respected; but ten minutes before, they were claiming all the sins possible.

Mr. Penly, do you give Ms. Bowen the respect she deserves?

FP. No.

ES. What stops you? Are you in a frantic hurry for total acceptance?

FP. Yes. I don’t think it’s as much as it used to be, but it’s still there.

ES. People want to be accepted, which usually means “Science, be damned!”

Mr. Penly has had some difficult times with you, Ms. Bowen, and I think the difficult times are related to his desire to be completely accepted. To be completely accepted means: you give nothing but pleasure and you do nothing but good and you stand for comfort in a harsh world. That’s Mr. Penly’s notion of being completely accepted. And it can get people into trouble. I don’t think you wholly understand that, Ms. Bowen.

JB. No, I don’t. But I’m learning a lot more.

ES. It’s worth understanding.

JB. Yes, it is. Thank you for making things so clear.