Nancy Huntting, Aesthetic Realism consultant, writes:

Is there a fight in everyone—the central fight in our minds—that affects all our decisions, and our happiness? This issue of TRO explains, and uses thrilling poetry to show, what that fight is—and you’ll learn about how the fight in us has to do with love, economics, America now! There’s nothing more urgent (and exciting) to understand than what’s described in “Love, Poetry, & Value,” the new issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

Here is the conclusion of the lecture by Eli Siegel that we have been serializing: Is Hope Worth Money?, of 1969. It is powerful, exciting. It is important as literary criticism. And the understanding in it is vital to the life of any person. It is about value, and the relation of value to its opposite, fact. Value is such a vast subject. It includes both how much one will pay for a banana and the value of beauty, love, knowledge, and the world itself.

Aesthetic Realism has identified the biggest fight about value in the life of every person. This battle is between the following opponents: 1) the value of having things and people managed by you, dismissable by you, used by you to feel superior, versus 2) the value of being deeply affected by people and things, wanting to understand them, seeing meaning in them, and becoming, therefore, your own expressed self. That is the fight between contempt for the world and respect for it. And it is the chief fight about value in every aspect of our lives—and our nation’s life.

For Example, There Is Economics

We know that economics as a study looks at value in various ways—looks, for instance, at “exchange value” and “use value.” However, there is the matter of what value ought to impel the economy of a nation. On what value should it be based?…Read more