Steve Weiner, computer specialist and Aesthetic Realism associate, writes:

Aesthetic Realism is great in its explanation of two huge subjects—ownership and power—and how they affect our lives. That’s what the current issue of TRO is about. For instance: Can we have a sense of ownership that hurts us very much?—and what would it mean for something to be ours rightly? What kind of power truly represents us, makes us stronger and kinder? Is an economic system unjust and inefficient for the same reason people are unfair to each other in social life and marriage? These questions and more are answered logically, culturally, and so hopefully in “Ownership, Uncertainty, & the Self of Everyone,” the new issue of The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known!

The commentary by Ellen Reiss begins:

Dear Unknown Friends:

We publish here the first section of How Effective Are We?, a lecture Eli Siegel gave on July 24, 1970. It is part of his great Goodbye Profit System series, begun two months earlier. In that series, Mr. Siegel was showing that a certain point in history had been reached: economics based on the profit motive—on seeing human beings in terms of how much money one can make from them—had failed. And the evidence of that failure was ever-increasing. To have as a nation’s economic “engine” the seeing of people in terms of money for oneself and the use of them accordingly, had always been unethical. But now this unethical thing was terminally ailing, no matter how much longer it might be made to stagger on.

In his Goodbye Profit System series, Mr. Siegel gave wide-ranging and vivid evidence for that fact. He used instances of history, of culture, of current happenings and people’s feelings. The years since have shown he was right, as I have described in issues of this journal. For now, I’ll mention, swiftly, two things. 1) It’s well known that more and more of America’s wealth is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. And the middle class is much smaller than it was fifty years ago. 2) We know that while former generations felt they would lead better economic lives than their parents led, this is overwhelmingly NOT felt now by Millennials and Gen Zers. Today’s young and young-ish men and women are much tossed about as to jobs, are often in massive debt, and are very worried—and angry. —The facts just mentioned are obvious signs that the for-profit system has failed.

Ownership, Power: What Makes Them Good or Bad?

In the lecture we’re serializing, Mr. Siegel speaks about two big matters that are in economics, but are also in every aspect of people’s lives: ownership and power. Here, he looks at these mainly in relation to people’s thoughts, motives as to each other, ways of being, and self-dislike….Read more