How Do We See People?
By Alice Bernstein
I am grateful to tell you what I learned from Aesthetic Realism, the
philosophy founded by the greatest educator in world history, Eli Siegel,
on the urgent question, How should we see people? I learned that
unless we are proud of our answer, we can’t have the lives we hope for
or a sane world. To be proud of how we see people means using them to understand
reality itself. It means seeing people's feelings as real, and wanting
to be fair to them.
When people in homes, schools, governments, see in this way, the world
will be safe and kind. Anything else is contempt: using people to make
ourselves important; and contempt is the cause of all injustice, whether
in social life or internationally.
How
We See People Begins in the Family
As a child growing up in Brooklyn, I couldn't make sense of the way my
mother was so sweet when she sang and so angry at another time; or the
way my father showed pleasure by energetically slapping someone on the
back, and later raised his fist in anger. My parents were puzzling to me;
and I felt, rather than show confusing feelings the way they did I would
be cool and still. I felt superior to them.
In Children's Guide to
Parents and Other Matters, Eli Siegel writes: "The first thing
necessary in liking people is to see that they have insides just as you
have." I didn't see the insides of other people as like mine. I felt important
calmly looking down, preferring what Mr. Siegel has described as "the repose
of contempt." In school I liked learning, but I didn't like playing with
children unless I could tell them what to do. I was to learn that the reason
I could be suddenly nasty to people was that they stood for a world I saw
as my enemy. I remember, with deep regret, calling a little boy I'd never
seen before a cruel name because his skin was darker than mine. The memory
of his pained face is so vivid-and of how awful I felt. And I can hear
my mother say imploringly, "What's the matter with you, Alice? Don't you
have a heart?"
Our selves, Aesthetic Realism teaches, are ethical, and when we have
contempt for people we punish ourselves. I was terrified to be alone, and
couldn't go to sleep without crying.
Through an infinitely kind fate -- despite a boycott of Aesthetic Realism
by people on the press who were furious with their respect for Mr. Siegel
and their need to learn from him -- my parents, Jack and May Musicant,
met the scientific, passionate good will of Aesthetic Realism, which changed
our lives. In an Aesthetic Realism lesson I attended with my parents when
I was eight, Eli Siegel asked me: "Why sometimes are you not a friend to
your mother?" And he explained: "We have two feelings about others: 1)
we want to be alone; 2) we want to be in company' You are yourself and
also related to other people." I remember being so surprised when Mr. Siegel
asked me if my mother had ever cried as a little girl-and feeling much
closer to her. It had never occurred to me that my mother had feelings
like mine. He gave me an assignment, to write "What Are My Mother's Feelings?"
I began seeing that her feelings took in so much -- music, cooking, the
ocean, everyone she knew, including her own mother and people I never heard
of.
I was learning from Eli Siegel, the person in whom science and tenderness
were utterly one, that knowing people is a way to know myself. No child
seeing people's feelings as like hers would want to harm them-or later
want bombs to fall on them. The Musicant family was understood to our depths
by the most grandly comprehensive knowledge in world history. I am so sorry
that instead of cherishing this fact, we were angry with Eli Siegel's greatness.
I look forward to spending the rest of my life showing the gratitude I
wish we had shown to humanity's greatest friend.
The
Way of Seeing a Man that Makes for Pride in Love
As a young woman, I learned from Aesthetic Realism that the one way to
be proud of how I saw a man was to use him to know and like the world.
But as a teenager I didn't care much how a young man saw other people as
long as he adored me and let me manage him. Romance to me was sitting by
a lake, looking wise and mysteriously thoughtful, as a man told me his
troubles. Meanwhile, I felt cold and incapable of having large feelings
for a man.
I love Eli Siegel for criticizing my dreary, unjust way of seeing men
and generously teaching me to have good will. In a lesson when I was seventeen,
with kind humor, he presented the fight in me through this story: "There
was once a woman who, seeing somebody lying on the grass, said, 'Wake up!
There's a world waiting for you-and you also look a little ridiculous!'
Then, there was another woman who said, 'You poor man; you must be so tired.
Isn't this grass lovely? I am so glad I can share it with you.' Which do
you veer toward?" I said, "The second." Mr. Siegel continued: "There are
many gentlemen who wish a lady to join them in their despair. If Alice
should meet one, she's sunk: she may win the man but lose a possibility
in herself." He told me to be "a Columbus of the soul, and explore!"
In 1963 I married David
Bernstein, and I learned to see my husband, not as someone for me coolly
to own, but as having the universe in him: the grace and seriousness of
a finch on our windowsill, the rousingness and serenity of a novel by Walter
Scott, the delicacy and strength of a peony.
We have been married for 37 years, and were proud to write in a letter
to Ellen Reiss, Class Chairman of Aesthetic Realism, with whom we are honored
to study now, that we have seen "when two people [have the] purpose to
respect the world, there is no limit to how much love and happiness can
be in their lives!”
The study of Aesthetic Realism takes place in many ways, including individual
consultations, by telephone as well as in person, at the not-for-profit
Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City, (212) 777-4490; www.AestheticRealism.org
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