Aesthetic Realism Foundation

141 Greene Street
New York, NY 10012

 

Dear Friend,

I am very glad to be writing to you about the Aesthetic Realism Foundation. The beautiful work of this not-for-profit educational foundation has always been urgently needed. Now, in the midst of a pandem­ic, and with Americans fervently demanding that racial injustice end, the work of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation is needed more urgently than ever—and I hope it will be supported generously.

With the spread of the coronavirus, people are very frightened and angry; many worry about their state of mind. At the same time, the turbulence that affected people before the epidemic continues: distress (now fiercer than ever) about money and work; big confusion about love; and the feeling “Why can’t I be happy for any length of time? Is it the fault of other people—or is there something in myself that gets in the way?” And there are the matters that have been so big in America these years: What can finally end racism, in all its horrors? What can make our economy kind, respectful of everyone? What can make our schools successful—really enable children to learn?

I have seen that Aesthetic Realism has the answers to these problems, these questions. Its principles are true and unfailingly kind. It shows how, on a completely honest basis, we can like the world and ourselves more than we knew was possible—yes, even now!

Eli Siegel, the great American scholar, poet, and historian, founded Aesthetic Realism in 1941. No person’s lifework was ever grander, more joy-giving. It was the honor of my life to have studied with him. Here are three of his magnificent philosophic principles:

• The largest purpose of every human being is the liking of the world on an honest basis.
• The greatest danger for a person is to have contempt for the world and what is in it….Contempt can be defined as the lessening of what is different from oneself as a means of self-increase as one sees it.
• All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.

What I learned from Aesthetic Realism, based on those principles, changed my life profoundly and enormously for the better—in ways that represent what millions of people hope for. I’ll tell about that fact in more detail later. I learned about the big fight in me, and in everyone: it’s between the desire to like the world honestly and the desire to have contempt. I learned that contempt is the cause of all cruelty—including racism and economic injustice—and that my own contempt was what made me so cold to people. I learned that my contempt was in a war with what my care for music came from: my desire to like and be fair to the world. And I learned what I had met nowhere else in my study of music—WHY music matters: because music, when it is good, “tells what the world is like.” Music is the oneness of reality’s opposites—the opposites every person is longing to make sense of in ourselves. My gratitude for learning this has no limit.

The Work of the Foundation

In this time of necessary social distancing, I’m very glad to say that many Aesthetic Realism classes are continuing, taking place through video conferencing. And people are having consultations by telephone. I’ll say more about consultations in a while. But to give a sense of the wide public education the Foundation provides, here is a small sample of the many events that took place in 2019. In large measure, these events were financially sustained by the contributions of people. Some of the events took place at the Foundation; others were part of its wonderful Outreach Programs:

• February 7. The seminar “Happiness: Can a Woman Really Have It—& What Stops Her?”
• June 15. The dramatic presentation “Love & Art—Should They Have the Same Purpose?”
• July 23. A workshop in Spanish and English at a Brooklyn senior center, “Memory Shows We Are Connected to the Whole World.”
• September 15. A special event: a dramatic reading of GWE: Young Man of New Guinea—A Novel Against Racism, written by anthropologist and Aesthetic Realism consultant Arnold Perey, PhD.
• October 19. Christopher Balchin, teacher of history and Aesthetic Realism associate, speaking at the Florida Council for the Social Studies on “Can Studying the Causes of the First World War Have Students Be Kinder?”
• November 7. “The Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method: Students Learn, Prejudice Is Defeated!”—a seminar presenting the unparalleled success of this great educational method in classrooms across the greater NYC area.

On our website you can find out about the Foundation’s Outreach Programs, consultations for individuals, public seminars, dramatic presentations, special events, and courses in fields as diverse as cinema, marriage, poetry, anthro­pology, education, the visual arts, and music. I am proud to co-teach one of these, “The Opposites in Music,” with Barbara Allen.

And there is the Foundation’s biweekly periodical, The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known. At this momentous time in history, The Right Of  is more than ever loved, respected, admired, studied, by readers internationally. The editor is Ellen Reiss, the Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Education. Her commentaries—like the classes she teaches—have a combination of honesty, kindness, and vibrant scholarship, which makes them, in my opinion, without parallel in the world today.

Aesthetic Realism Consultations

I began my study of Aesthetic Realism in consultations. I was then a college student who hoped to become a composer. But things were going badly: I was stymied in my musical work; I felt I had lost my creativity and feared I’d never get it back. There was much pain between my girlfriend and me, and I knew I had something big to do with the cause. Would I ever have a good effect on a woman? Have real friends? Stop being so lonely? I was scared that the answer was No.

In Aesthetic Realism consultations a person has the oppor­tu­n­ity to speak with three Aesthetic Realism consultants and learn about oneself through principles that are true. In my first consultation, I learned that underlying the problems that dis­tressed me was this cause: I did not have the world and people in my mind respectfully; instead, I had contempt. People largely existed, as I saw it, to applaud me. If someone indicat­ed they were impressed by me, it made a conversation a success; other­wise, I felt cheated. I gave hardly any thought to their inner lives.

My consultants asked: “Do you believe, Mr. Green, that music is meant to be able to affect the heart, mind, soul of everybody ?” I answered, “I’m not at all sure.” I thought of the complex technical things I learned at the conservatory, and how important I felt being one of the few people who knew about these modernistic musical matters. Yet though I wouldn’t outwardly admit it, I was upset that when my music was performed, it didn’t make much of an impact. To be blunt: it left nearly everyone cold. I tried to take comfort in telling my­self that audiences, made up of “average” people, were simply not capable of appreciating the depth and subtlety of my mind. But I didn’t convince myself.

Now I began to learn that music—which I had seen as in a different world from my relations with people—was really a guide as to how to see them! My consultants explained to me this central idea of Aesthetic Realism: every person has an attitude to the world as a whole, and this attitude affects every specific thing we do, including how we think about people. “Have you seen your individuality as coming from where you’re like other people, or different?” they asked. “Different,” I said. Art, my consultants explained, shows what the world itself truly is: the oneness of opposites. And crucial to both art and life, Eli Siegel taught, are the opposites of Sameness and Difference. Notes in a melody, they explained, must be different, or there is no melody. At the very same time, the notes must reach out to each other, be vibrantly related. Otherwise, there’s no music—just isolated sounds. It’s only when there is fairness to both sameness and difference that beauty occurs. And to be happy and proud, a person—for instance Ed Green—has to see that while he’s just himself, he has a likeness to everyone.

What a revelation! No wonder I had been lonely, and failing in my music: what I was doing in my thoughts not only was unkind, it was against art. “In music, if you were true to what you really  feel,” my consultants continued, “would you be true at the same time to what other people feel?”

That possibility had never occurred to me before. And so began my revolu­tionary education. I loved it, and knew I wanted someday to be able to teach Aesthetic Realism myself. In time, I applied to study with Eli Siegel, and I am grateful to say I was accepted.

Parents, Women, Music: All Are Real

It’s an honor to quote now from several discussions that took place in Aesthetic Realism classes, attended by many people, which Mr. Siegel taught. In one class, in which the ethics of everyday life was the subject, he spoke to me about how I saw my parents. I had mentioned an argument I’d had with my mother—I remembered nearly everything I had said, but hardly a word of hers remained in my mind.

“Do you think your attitude to your parents hurts you now?” Eli Siegel asked. And he continued: “One thing you wouldn’t do, if you saw it, would be to weaken yourself as to music. Do you think the way you see your parents is good for music, or not good, or is there no relation?” I was amazed. I had never thought there was any relation.

Aesthetic Realism, he said, sees all knowledge as continuous, and all true harmony as continuous. And he asked, “Do you think that when you see something well, you are trying to have your life in harmony?” “Yes,” I answered. “And if you don’t do enough to be in harmony with your parents, is that against harmony in music? Would you say that when you dismiss the reality which is your parents, you are caring for the reality that music tries to describe?” “No,” I said.

“Once we decide to be contemptuous of anything,” Mr. Siegel continued, “it can work even in a field where we think we are fervent.”  Then he showed me that my desire to evade thinking about my parents in order “to be comfort­able” was criticized by the history of music: “because the whole history of music is to get to something uncomfortable and show that there is something harmonious there—particularly modern music.”

I knew music needed honest dissonance, was more vibrant because of it. But I had thought life should have no dissonance at all—at least for me. No ques­tioning, just praise of me. And that was so in how I saw love.

What Interferes with Love

Aesthetic Realism explains that what hurts love, and makes it impossible, is that instead of seeing a person as a beginning point to like the whole world, we use them as a means of making ourselves important. About the trouble I was having with a woman I’ll call Dora Adler, Mr. Siegel asked, “Do you like being masterful?” It was true. I expected Dora to put me ahead of everything. Her job was to take my side in any dispute; praise me on a steady basis; act wowed by any music I wrote; laugh at any joke I made. I saw myself as a politically advanced person; for years, I’d spoken out intensely against imperialism and economic greed—yet the way of mind behind these was exactly what was motivating me: I was determined to own another person.

As I’ve been describing, one of the beautiful things about Aesthetic Realism is that a person’s unique, individual life is shown to be related to matters of wide cultural significance. Whenever Eli Siegel spoke to, or about, a person, this was true. In the discussion with me about Ms. Adler, he continued, “All the arts, Aesthetic Realism says, are in behalf of respect for reality. Do you think having a minor attitude towards what is real helps one in music? I think you are suffering from a desire to dismiss Dora Adler; she retaliated, and you have had some awful times.” “That’s true,” I said. “It has been the male tendency to make less of women,” Mr. Siegel explained, “because anything we can make less of makes us feel more important.” Through this discussion, he was enabling me to become both a better man and a better musician.

How Much Feeling?

What an education I was receiving! A tremendously important point in it was a discussion in which Mr. Siegel spoke to me about the opposites of intensity and coldness, feeling and toughness. He said, “Every now and then, Mr. Green, you show a great deal of feeling. But when people show more than they want to show, they can regret it. Are you sure, when you show feeling, it is the tough thing in you that has done it, or do you think it’s the weak thing?”

Ed Green. I’m not sure.

Eli Siegel.  Have you tried to have feelings come to their true strength, or to hush them into neutrality? Everyone in this room wants to have more feeling, also feeling that is more accurate. So do you think that at times the desire to let go, to be as intense as one can be, is sensible? All sincerity is a yielding to something. The world told you what to do when it told you to be born. Do you think that can be repeated?

EG. Yes.

ES. Deep in every person is the question of whether we should feel more or less. Is the thing you don’t like yourself for, the fact that you can’t have enough feeling—and also the kind you want?

EG. That’s true.

ES. Every person has felt they were too cold, with hearts too much like stone, or cold spaghetti. But as a person is afraid of being cold, he is also afraid of being warmer, because God knows what that will lead to. This is a very prevalent thing. Every person wants to be more passionate, and every person wants to be left alone.

I felt so deeply and respectfully understood. “Yes, thank you,” I told him. “I have felt this all my life.”

Thinking about that discussion, these many years later, I am so moved at the grandeur of Eli Siegel’s knowledge, and his kindness to me. Through what he was teaching me, I became more honest: a person able to have deeper feeling and make wiser, warmer, more sincere choices.

I had the privilege to see Eli Siegel teach many, many people, each unique in their life experience and their way of seeing the world. His good will and integrity were constant: he wanted people, always, to be able to like them­selves on a true and solid basis. I do not know of any person in history more compassionate and generous.

How can I express the awe I feel looking at this, the biggest fact of my life—that I could learn about the world and myself from the greatest critic who ever lived, the man who comprehended Shakespeare and Immanuel Kant; the philosopher who achieved what the centuries longed for, the true explanation of the nature of beauty in art and in reality itself? Eli Siegel was without peer as a scholar. His intellect was mighty, he loved humor, and (how rare this is) he was entirely free of competitiveness. That was so even as year after year he met anger—resentment from people who were envious of the depth and originality of his mind and fearful of the size of respect for reality that Aesthetic Realism makes for. I regret, with all my heart, that I had this resentment; it is the cause of my greatest remorse. And I have seen it in others, sometimes taking the form of virulent, vicious, lying ill will.

Yet always, Mr. Siegel wanted to find value everywhere it existed. He lectured on all the arts and sciences, and with the most honorable purpose ever had by any person: to show, through thousands of examples, how art, science, history give evidence for this profound and thrilling truth—we live in a world we can honestly like, because reality has a structure which is permanently beautiful and sensible, the oneness of opposites. Only from a mind as large, precise, and as lovingly kind as his, could Aesthetic Realism come to be.

People Are Longing for Aesthetic Realism

Through Aesthetic Realism my life has much more happiness, integri­ty, and self-respect than I ever dreamed possible. I changed about love!—which has made possible a marriage with my dear wife, Carrie Wilson, now in its 21^st rich and exciting year. Our continuing study of the beautiful ethics of Aesthetic Realism makes for deep, wide, passionate feeling between us, and about the world.

There is more to say. I became a better composer through Aesthetic Realism; a far deeper friend; a kinder son; a teacher who feels profoundly expressed—excited with each new semester. Where once I was cold and competitive with other musicians, I now have a purpose to encourage their lives, their music, and their deepest hope—to like the world. My gratitude for all this is boundless.

I’ve seen huge respect for this grand ethical education again and again as I’ve taught music in America and overseas. I’ve seen the joy in people’s faces as they learn about the oneness of opposites in the music of Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Bach, Stravinsky, the Beatles—and in themselves. I’ve heard people in Italy, Paraguay, Ireland, Croatia, Portugal—let alone New York, Ohio, California—say, with a thrill in their voices, that they never heard anything so kind, powerful, and true as Eli Siegel’s philosophy.

They are right. That is why the work of the Aesthetic Realism Foundation should be known, treasured—and supported.

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