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Ann Richards & Christopher Balchin

 

The Asian News, of Manchester, England, published this letter about a horrific act of racist violence.

They gave it the following title:

 

Aesthetic Realism Way Forward

It was shocking to read about the racist attack on Mohammed Hussain in his Peel Lane convenience store (Asian News, May 31).


Recently a young man of Sri Lankan origin, died from the injuries he had suffered in a racist attack by two young white men in my home town, Ashford, Kent.


As a white person myself, I deplore these acts, as well as the daily racist attitudes and comments that people have to endure.


It is urgent for everyone to know what Eli Siegel, founder of the philosophy Aesthetic Realism, explained. He saw that there is a constant debate in the mind of every person between the desire to have respect for the world, see meaning in it--and the desire for contempt.


“As soon as you have contempt, he wrote, “you don’t want to see another person as having the fullness that you have, you can rob that person, hurt that person, kill that person.” No matter how considerate we judge ourselves, if we don’t see another person as having the depth of feeling, the reality we have, we are unkind and worse.


Racist attitudes, let alone attacks, simply would not occur if people saw each other as having the same depth of feeling as themselves.


I know this from my own life. Growing up, I hated cruelty when I saw it, but I didn't see that the way I robbed other people of meaning made me cruel myself. When a young man from the Indian subcontinent started at the 99 per cent-white school I attended, I made fun of him and didn’t see him as having feelings like my own.


In the international journal The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, Class Chairman Ellen Reiss said: “What needs to replace (racism) is not the feeling that the difference of another person is somehow tolerable. What is necessary is the seeing and feeling that the relation of sameness and difference between ourselves and that other person is beautiful."


I know if I changed, anyone can!

Christopher Balchin
Grand Street , New York,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are further links about how Aesthetic Realism sees the arts & sciences, urgent cultural and economic matters, ethics, and the life questions of every person:

Anthropologist and author Dr. Arnold Perey tells of his field research in New Guinea and the classes he teaches today--and much more--at Aesthetic Realism: A New Perspective for Anthropology

For teachers, parents, and others, here are links that will tell you more about the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method:

What makes a photograph beautiful? How can a photographer improve his or her work? What does the art of photography have to do with justice to people? Find out at Len Bernstein: Photographic Education Based on the Aesthetic Realism of Eli Siegel

Some of Eli Siegel's books, essays, lectures, and poems can be read at The Aesthetic Realism Online Library  Also, see what critics have said about Aesthetic Realism and Eli Siegel. 

Aesthetic Realism Associate Lynette Abel tells here about classes she attended taught by Eli Siegel, reports on classes conducted by Ellen Reiss, and reprints some of the newspaper articles she has written: Lynette Abel: Aesthetic Realism and Life

What interferes with our expression? Find out at Aesthetic Realism Encourages Self-Expression the website of Miriam Mondlin

Read Ellen Reiss's critical observations about the poetry of Robert Burns (one of our favourite poets). She shows how relevant what Burns was writing about 200 years ago is to what is going on today. His poetry has the terrifically just way of seeing people that is needed by government leaders and every one of us.

Aesthetic Realism explains that in order to really respect any person, whether someone of another culture or your own husband or wife, is to see that person as representing nothing less than the world itself. How can we see a person that way? Look at Eli Siegel's Is Beauty the Making One of Opposites? Ask yourself, does this person have opposites? Do they have every one of these fifteen pairs? (And more besides?) Is he/she trying to make sense of how they have these opposites?

Injustice can certainly be based on race, but it can also be based simply on seeing another person's way of meeting the world as different from one's own, and therefore less valuable. And about this, a person can be monumentally wrong. A classic instance of this in literary history is taken up by Ellen Reiss in relation to the great poet John Keats. And she shows the immediate relevance of this mis-seeing to our own lives and time.

One of our favourite links is to syndicated columnist Alice Bernstein. Her writing against racism has Aesthetic Realism as its basis.

To see what Aesthetic Realism is--and what it is not--see the website devoted to accuracy, honesty, justice--the plain truth!: Countering the Lies.

 

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