Aesthetic Realism Foundation

Learn

Anthropology Is about You & Everyone

Taught by Arnold Perey, PhD

Photograpy by Arnold Perey, Boys in New Guinea, on the cover of his novel GWEPeople, everywhere in the world, from the grasslands of Africa to the tents of Asia and North America, are understood through the principles of Aesthetic Realism: we are all trying to like the world aesthetically, as a oneness of opposites. All humanity is alike: kind and cruel, accurate and wild, powerful and delicate—trying to put together opposites in ourselves. Through Aesthetic Realism, anthropology is essential knowledge for us to know ourselves and do away with prejudice.

Alternate Wednesdays, 6:00 – 7:30 PM Eastern Time (USA)

Classes via Zoom video conference now in session.

FALL 2021

“All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”  — Eli Siegel

  • Sep 15: The Scientific, Calming, Wild, Energizing Need for Anthropology 

Our needs are aesthetic. We need to be free and accurate, calm and dynamic. The method of Aesthetic Realism enables anthropology to meet this need–for an unexpected and completely scientific reason. As we see how people from scorching African desert to Himalayan grassland, for example, are fervently hoping to make a one of exactly the same opposites as ourselves—we see and value people from afar like never before, welcome their kinship, and are more alive than ever.

  • Sep 29: Learning about Oneself—from a Culture 6,000 Miles Away

From the homeland of Genghis Khan comes ethical storytelling about bad land-owners, good wives, inept royalty, and magical animals. They illuminate the aesthetic purpose you and I have in a New York apartment, grocery store, a bank.

  • Oct 13: Need and Love in Anthropology

Eli Siegel stated, “love is proud need.” How true this is for people everywhere, who are more like us than we thought, than we knew, than we imagined!

  • Oct 27: The Mistakes of Early People–What Can They Teach Us?

“We are coming to look on men who have lived in the past, far away from us in time, as people like us, or would have been just as we, had their times been ours.”

—Eli Siegel, “The Middle Ages, Say”

  • Nov 10: The Anthropology of Truth and Lies 

We make a cross-cultural study of truth and lying, and ask how each is seen when the human self is at its deepest and represents what humanity most wants. Our documentation is from the cultures of Africa, native America, Japan, ancient Rome, and more.

  • Nov 28: *Sunday — NOT Wednesday Nov 24  — Artistic Self-Expression: Prehistory 

The Visual Arts & the Opposites class, taught by Marcia Rackow, meets in joint session with this Anthropology class on Sunday, November 28th, from 11 AM to 12:30 PM. We combine our forces to study some of the finest art objects of Prehistory and to ask, What was the artist’s motive? 

  • Dec 8: An Anthropological Fiesta — Papers by Students in the Class

To audit:

  • Permission must be requested by telephone at least 2 days in advance of the date of the class.
  • Contact Registrar at 212.777.5055, between 2-6 PM Eastern Time (USA), Monday through Friday.
  • Once you receive permission to audit a class, click on the “AUDIT” button to pay the fee.

Fee: $60 per semester (7 classes)

Auditing fee: $12

See Aesthetic Realism: A New Perspective for Anthropology and Sociology and his novel Gwe: Young Man of New Guinea—a novel against racism.

Three instances of how Aesthetic Realism shows people of different cultures are more alike than has been known:

[1] What Big Mistakes Do Even Smart Men Make? With a consideration of the African story “Maliane and the Water Snake” from Lesotho.

[2] About the Ethical Unconscious. The myth of the flood: discussing anthropology, the anthropologist, and a representative American woman, Daphne Baker.

[3] “How Much Feeling—and What Kind—Should a Man Have?” Discussing my life, the life of Fusiwe, a head man of the Yanomami People, and men of the United States

Part 1  |  Part 2  |  Part 3

FACULTY BIO