The Pleasures and Perils of Conceit

Aesthetic Realism explains these two crucial things about conceit: 1) the pleasure one gets from it is that of contempt; a conceited person gets to an exalted opinion of himself by having a low opinion of the world and looking down on everything; 2) Because this is a false basis for liking oneself, a person can never really feel confident, and he will also punish himself by feeling inferior and low. This is one of the large perils of conceit.

Learning this, first in consultations, and then in classes I attended taught by Eli Siegel made for a huge and beautiful change in my life.

The logic of Aesthetic Realism is beautiful and scientific: it shows we come from the world and have its structure of opposites in us. Therefore, our opinion of ourselves is in direct relation to our attitude towards it; the more we honestly think well of the world, respect it, the more we will truly esteem ourselves.

I. My Conceit: A Primer

In an issue of The Right Of, Mr. Siegel describes the two ways people have tried to think well of themselves:

"The first is honestly to respect a thing, give it meaning. The second way is to diminish as much as possible, give as little meaning to things as we can; and feel the less we have given meaning to other things, the more the edifice of ourselves is substantial."

As a child, the place I respected things most was in school, as I eagerly read such books as It's Like This, Cat and worked on math problems. But I also used getting good grades, along with how often my mother commented on them, to be conceited. I was very competitive, making sure everyone was aware of my superiority. If another child came from a family better off than mine, I would say "Peter may be richer but I'm in the Intellectually Gifted Class, he's not." And if someone else got higher marks, I would tell myself "All Mitch does is study. At least, I know how to have fun." In the sixth grade, I was so stuck up and such a showoff, that my teacher, Miss Jourdan, once said to me: "Stop acting as if you're the most important child in this class--because you're not!"

One of the pleasures of conceit is thinking that you're so much sharper, keener than anyone else but this can make a person stupid in many ways. In a high school social studies class, I finished a test about halfway through the period even as everyone else was busily writing away. I didn’t ask myself why this was; I just smugly sat back, glorying in how brighter I was than all the other students. But when I got my test back, I got a 35--in my arrogance, I had carelessly misread the instructions and hadn't answered all the questions.

Aesthetic Realism taught me that because conceit is based on making other people and what they feel unimportant, a large peril is that a person inevitably feels ashamed. Once, a friend came to talk to me after he had argued with his girlfriend. He felt very bad and I could have tried to be useful. Instead, I mocked him, acting as if he were ridiculous for getting so wrought up. I’ll never forget his shock and then the disgusted look on his face. It was after times like these, when I got a sight of how unfeeling I was, that I would call myself a "jerk" and say, "Why can't you keep your big mouth shut?" I would then sleep for hours on end, and not want to talk to anyone for days.

I was, as Eli Siegel once said of another person, a relation of "too much confidence, too much despair." But I never saw a connection between thinking I was too good for nearly anybody, and then feeling that I really didn't matter much to other people; between my inflated picture of myself and my abilities, and feeling I was an uninteresting person who hadn't done anything useful. A great peril of conceit is this: if we have a disproportionately high picture of ourselves, we will also have a very low one. In The Right Of, Mr. Siegel explains:

"Once you start making yourself out better than you are, you will make yourself out worse than you are. Man is the only animal who can call himself names. People make themselves stupider, more criminal, more vicious than they are. One reason is that they have come to their good points too easily."

My life changed because I heard kind, straight criticism of my contemptuous purpose with people and the world. This ended the agonizing seesaw I was on between excessively praising and then condemning myself. And I’m grateful that I learned my life had a much larger, more beautiful goal: to value things truly, to try to have a good effect on people. I began to see meaning and wonder in things that I once hardly paid attention to such as a leaf, a pussycat, a painting; and by caring so much more about what people deserve, which now takes in my work as a union official--I thought so much better of myself without any painful kickbacks. I had an ease and pride that was new.

II. Conceit is Perilous to Love

Once, I was in a position many other men in America are in now: while I hoped to care for a woman, I didn’t want to give up my conceit. My purpose was not to respect a woman, use her to see more meaning in things but to have her join me in building up the "edifice of [myself]." When a woman was critical, as she inevitably was, I got hurt and angry, and our relationship would end bitterly. Then I would despair and feel I was never going to have love.

At a time a woman and I were giving each other pain, in a class Mr. Siegel had me see what she objected to. He asked me:

ES: Do you believe you represent a tradition in men?

SW: Yes, the unwillingness to respect women.

ES: Do you think Miss Chapman doesn't like your arrogance? As soon as something good happens to you, you get arrogant. [And he explained:] An arrogant person is one who takes things unto himself that do not belong to him. You think Miss Chapman needs you more than she needs truth.

And he asked me: "Do you think [your arrogance] causes you any sorrow?" It did. I love him for explaining something that hurt my whole life--how I used fortunate things that came to me, including a woman showing me care, not to ask more of myself, but to be complacent and add to my conceit. I began to see that my arrogance, which I tried to see as a blessing, was really a great enemy: it made love out of the question.

III. A Study in Male Conceit

A novel I love is The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James. This classic is the story of Isabel Archer, one of the finest heroines in all literature; it is also the portrait of a very conceited man, Gilbert Osmond.

Eli Siegel is the critic who showed the tremendous import-ance of Henry James' work. In his landmark book, James and the Children: A Consideration of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, Mr. Siegel describes James's purpose as author that is so against the coldness conceit makes for:

"[James is] asking us to participate more in the lives of others. [He is] asking us to know that other things feel and that the feelings of others are things which we diminish or are not interested in at a loss to ourselves."

Osmond, as character, is useful in showing not only how much a man’s conceit robs him of emotions he can be proud of, but makes him mean, even sinister. These words of Mr. Siegel in The Right Of describe him:

"Conceit can make one satisfied where one shouldn't be, but also can make one dissatisfied where one shouldn't be. Persons would rather be dissatisfied with the world than dissatisfied with what they take to be themselves."

An American living in Italy, Osmond is described by James as "indolent" and a "dilettante" who acts like a "prince"--he is smugly self-satisfied, seeing himself as vastly superior to the rest of what he calls "dingy" humanity. He is a snob and uses his taste in art to build up the "edifice of [himself]" and be in a "state of disgust" with nearly everything else. “Osmond was certainly fastidious and critical,” James writes,

"His sensibility had governed him. It had made him impatient of vulgar troubles and had led him to live by himself, in a sifted, arranged world."

I learned that when we take an aspect of the world--it can be music, sports, computers, or cars--and use it for our own conceit, we will inevitably be dissatisfied both with that thing and ourselves. We see this when Osmond, after being complimented on his furnishings, says "I'm sick of my adorable taste." And James shows that under all his seeming self-assurance, Osmond has misgivings—he knows he doesn't have large feelings, isn't pleased enough by things. He writes:

"Osmond was too often--he would have admitted that--too sorely aware of something wrong, something ugly; the fertilizing dew of a conceivable felicity too seldom descended upon his spirit."

IV. How Should a Man See a Woman?

In Self and World, Mr. Siegel explains so deeply what every man
is hoping for in love:

"To know and feel the self of another is a beautiful thing. To see another person as having meaning and beauty and power is a lovely procedure."

And he also shows how conceit corrupts this when he writes:

"But to see another person as having meaning, having beauty, having power because one can use that person as an argument in behalf of one's self-love--that is really to despise a person; to hate him; to deindividualize him."

In his seeing of Isabel Archer, an American girl traveling in Europe, James shows some of the greatest "meaning" and "power" a woman has ever had. In beautiful prose, he says of her:

"Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a fine mind, to have a large perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. She spent half her time thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action."

This means Isabel wants to like the world, and have a great emotion about it. She has a deep care for beauty, but unlike Osmond, doesn't use it to look down on everything.

At first, Osmond becomes interested in Isabel because of the large fortune she has inherited. But as he gets to know her, he is deeply affected by her loveliness and depth of mind. Despite himself, he comes to care for her and for a time has less of an ugly dissatisfaction with the world. "Osmond was in love,” James writes, “and he had never deserved less the harsh criticism passed upon him." Osmond says to Isabel:

"It has made me better, loving you. It has made me wiser and easier and even stronger. Now, I'm really satisfied, because I can't think of anything better."

But there are two huge mistakes Osmond makes: one, he is too satisfied, is not ambitious enough to have an even greater emotion about Isabel and the world she stands for; and two, he feels that in thinking so much of Isabel, he has lessened himself. So Osmond does what other men, including myself, have done: he turns the very qualities that have moved him in a woman into, as Eli Siegel explains, "an argument on behalf of [his] self-love," to add to his conceit. Writes James:

"[Osmond] was immensely pleased with his young lady. What could be a finer thing to live with than a high spirit attuned to softness? For would not the softness be all for one's self? What could be a happier gift in a companion than a quick, fanciful mind which reflected one's [own] thought on a polished, elegant surface?"

Osmond says that Isabel has only one fault: she has "too many ideas" which "must be sacrificed". The only purpose of her intellect, he feels, should be to adorn his own being.

During their courtship, Osmond affects a humility and nobility that impress Isabel very much. But as admirable as she is, Isabel’s desire to see in Osmond the large qualities she is hoping to find in a man run ahead of seeing who he actually is, including where he is unjust. Despite the warnings of her family, she accepts Osmond's proposal of marriage. It is a fatal mistake, and one can see that Isabel, with all her goodness, hasn’t been sufficiently interested in seeing all the facts. And when we next see them three years after they had wed, James shows that Osmond is furious because Isabel has refused to become an extension of himself. James writes: “He had thought at first he could change her,” but he then sees with chagrin that he cannot.

Like many men, Osmond felt he could and had the right to mold a woman to fit in his with his arrangements. I was greatly fortunate to be learning about this ugly, conceited purpose in myself. In a class, when I said I was too jumpy in my thought about a woman I was hoping to care for, Miss Reiss asked:

ER: What do you think is the interference to knowing a woman?

SW: I can feel I want something to happen in my life now, and I’m looking for someone who fits the bill.

ER: To have your plans is all right. But what has to be present? The thing one is looking for has to be beautiful enough, and there has to be a large enough desire to know that person before deciding whether or not that person “fits the bill.” Otherwise, we are looking for someone to fulfill a function of ours. If we have to do with a person and are not interested in knowing her, what are we interested in?

SW: Someone to make us important.

ER: As much as we don’t want to know another person, it is self-love. Meanwhile, how much true satisfaction do you think you can get from knowing a woman?

The answer to that I’ve been seeing is much, much more than I knew. I thank Ellen Reiss so much for this discussion and the questions she asked. I am seeing the true pleasure and pride there is in knowing a woman, how she sees everything, not just me.

In the novel, Gilbert Osmond had expected his wife to join him in his conceited scorn for the world. But Isabel, because she still hopes to care for things, will not become a partner to this. In fact, she is a critic, despising the ugliness in him. Writes James:

"[Osmond] had plenty of contempt, and it was proper his wife should be as well furnished; but that she should turn the hot light of her disdain upon his conception of things--this was a danger he had not allowed for. When one had a wife who gave one that sensation there was nothing left but to hate her."

There is much in the book I cannot discuss, but throughout, we see how Isabel tries to remain true to herself despite Osmond’s ill will and we feel she is beautiful.

Because of Aesthetic Realism, men today do not have to be run by cruel conceit; we can learn how to be kind--to the world and a woman. And we can learn from what Eli Siegel describes in Self and World how true love is always a means of honestly thinking better of reality and ourselves. I end my paper with his beautiful words:

"A self can say to another being, 'Through what you do and what you are and what you can do, I can come to be more I, more me, more myself; and I can see the immeasurable being of things more wonderfully of me, for me, and therefore sharply and magnificently kind and akin.'”

What Stops a Man from Having True Love?

Aesthetic Realism shows what love really is: "proud need." It means we are pleased and made stronger by another person who represents the world so richly to us, stirs us so deeply, that we feel incomplete without that person. Everyone wants to feel this about someone else but we have to understand what in ourselves is against having this large emotion. We may long for love, but something in us feels we’re more important needing no one.”

I. OUR NARROW SELVES DO NOT WANT TO NEED ANYTHING

As a young boy, there were many things I felt I needed—the Lincoln logs that my brother and I used to construct buildings, my bicycle that I rode for hours, and very much, books. But as I got older, I felt increasingly that people were bothersome, too changeable, too demanding, and that the only person I could rely on and should need was myself. By my teens, while I still hung out with my friends on a Friday night, I spent a lot of time alone feeling it was only then that I could really do what I wanted, unencumbered by other people who as I told myself were "in my way" and "slowed me down."

I arrogantly felt there was hardly any thing another person could do for me that I couldn't do better myself. The idea of asking someone else's opinion I saw as a waste of time. Once, when a gas station attendant offered directions for a trip I was taking, I cut him off, saying curtly, "I know how to get there"--even though, as it turned out, my route took much longer. And as I sat in a science class at school, I felt, "Why do I need to listen to Mr. Goldberg; I can read the textbook and learn this stuff myself"--despite the fact that more than once I found I couldn't.

But with all my smug self-reliance, and while it was the last thing I would ever admit, I was worried that I would never have grand, sweeping feelings about another person, and that I would spend my life pretty much alone. I had no idea that even as I thought there was something very wrong with how little people meant to me, I was also having a victory in thinking no one mattered more to me than myself.

In an Aesthetic Realism class, Mr. Siegel explained a mistake I was making:

When we see the outside world wanting to assist us, we don't like it even though the direction we've adopted for ourselves may not be the best.

And he put into words what he called my "very unwise motto" which he said was shared by many people:

"Everything that happens to me must be done by myself; I won't let anything else affect me well."

I thank Mr. Siegel for criticizing the hurtful track I was on. What I learned enabled me to change a great deal on the subject of needing something outside myself. Where I once couldn't be in a conversation without very quickly getting impatient and annoyed, I began listening to people with pleasure. And instead of defending myself vociferously against anyone who questioned practically anything about me, I feel proud to need other people’s perceptions of me to be the person I want to be. This has made it possible for me to really have hope about love.

II. SELF-LOVE VS. TRUE CARE FOR ANOTHER

Right next to the ugly feeling in a man that he doesn’t need anything outside himself is the assumption that if we do have to do with another person, we’re bestowing a great favor. While I had changed in a big way in how I saw the world and people, I'm sorry to say I still clung to this egotistical attitude which a friend once described so aptly. He said that I felt that if I granted a woman my company, she should rest easy and be deeply pleased because one of the large hopes for her life had been met. At the time, I was so conceited I really didn't think I was wrong! Despite the fact that a number of women showed their displeasure with my self-inflated notions, when they did, I was shocked and hurt, feeling I was the one misseen and maltreated.

In a class, as I spoke dolefully about a breakup with a woman, Miss Reiss asked me:

Would you rather feel sad or change something central in yourself: the belief that you have the right to feel superior, to have contempt?

SW: I’m not sure.

ER: Do you think there is something you feel you're entitled to, and it doesn't go over with the ladies and it doesn't go over with yourself?

I began to do a study—both cultural and personal—about instances of self-love, and how it hurts one, including things I saw in myself. Here are two of the many points I wrote:

As I wore my new raincoat today, I had this picture of myself dashing down the street with everyone turning to look at me and thinking to themselves or commenting to others "What a tall, good-looking, well-dressed man he is!" This hurt me because it is a superficial, narrow way of seeing people: people want to like the whole world, be interested in all of it. (AND)

After leaving the museum today, what was most memorable were not the beautiful paintings by artists such as Degas and Courbet but by what I thought were my very keen observations of them. I hurt myself because I could have had more feeling for these works but instead chose to use some of the great art of the world to love myself which is clearly not their purpose.

This was an eye-opener; it helped to change the direction of my life. I saw that the way I used many things to aggrandize myself was really so small, even laughable and that there was something much larger I wanted.

III. A FILM OF THE 1990’S

I now discuss aspects of the 1993 movie "The Remains of the Day", based on the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It shows something of how far the narrow self of a man will go in protecting and treasuring his superiority to the world: it makes him hard, unfeeling and ruins any chance for true love. Meanwhile, I feel this film is not wholly honest because the main character, James Stevens, played by Anthony Hopkins, is made to seem poignant, even pathetic, not as essentially cold and unkind.

Set in England in the late 1930's as Hitler is gaining power in Europe, Mr. Stevens is the chief butler in charge of a large staff on the estate of Lord Darlington. We see right away that Stevens uses his job--the managing of Darlington Manor down to the smallest detail--for self-importance and snobbishness. While he is seemingly ever so polite, he runs the house with an iron hand, and maintains a steely distance between himself and his staff, keeping his emotions untouched and hidden. Stevens has what is described by Miss Reiss in The Right Of as the "contemptuous determination" to feel that:

No one is good enough to stir me completely--the only one who should be able to affect me is me!

One of the persons Mr. Stevens feels this about is Miss Kenton, the lively and competent head housekeeper, portrayed by Emma Thompson, whom he hires at the outset of the film. One day, she brings flowers to cheer up his somber office. But instead of welcoming her friendly encouragement, Stevens rebuffs her, saying, "I regard this room as my private place of work and I prefer to keep distractions to a minimum." Then he proceeds to find fault about some minor jobs she hasn't done to his exacting standards.

And a few scenes later, Miss Kenton tries to tell Stevens that his elderly father, a butler on the staff, is beginning to have difficulty performing his duties, but Stevens refuses to listen. When she kindly insists they speak, Stevens dismisses her by saying, "I'm afraid you can't talk to me this way, Miss Kenton. Perhaps you’ll allow me to go about my business." Soon afterwards, the senior Stevens, carrying a tray of china, trips in front of Darlington and his guests, falls down and is knocked unconscious.

IV. PERSONAL UNKINDNESS; INTERNATIONAL CRUELTY

One of the things this film points to is something Aesthetic Realism explains: the cold way a man can see a woman which makes love impossible and the horrors one nation can inflict upon another arise from a similar cause.

Mr. Siegel defined fascism as the "unwillingness to understand as power." And while it has certainly been seen that governments have been fascist, it hasn’t been seen as clearly that the determination not to see what another person feels has been very much in social life too. It is what impels Stevens, has him be quietly brutal. He makes it clear that none of the servants should show any feeling, especially for each other. And while he is willing to spend evenings with Miss Kenton discussing the business of the manor, when she tries to talk about what she feels, Stevens becomes even more determinedly unyielding. At one point, even as she weeps, he acts as if he doesn't notice and reminds her of figurines she hasn’t dusted. Ellen Reiss explains in The Right Of:

People have hoped for love, but they haven't seen they also hope for incomplete, tepid, dull feeling--because such feeling places a regal crown on one's own self-adoring forehead.

While Stevens’s coldness is vividly ugly, no man should feel he’s above it. At a time I was unkind to a woman and unwilling to see what she felt, Miss Reiss asked me:

Would you like to have love that is not tremendous but where you are the master? Would you rather have tyranny than love?

I'm sorry to say my answer was yes.

And it is tyranny over millions of people that is desired by the persons Stevens glorifies and serves so obsequiously. The fictional Lord Darlington represents many actual English noblemen who were Nazi sympathizers, very willing to betray their country by trying to have their government make a secret deal to appease Germany. But because Stevens gets so much contemptuous importance as Lord Darlington's head butler, he makes himself oblivious to the despicable way people are spoken about by Darlington's aristocratic guests at the sumptuous dinners he oversees; Stevens is more concerned with the proper placement of the silver and crystal. For instance, one guest says:

One has to regard the laws of the fascists as [to the Jews, Gypsies and Negroes] as a much overdue sanitary measure.... Here, we [have] prisons, over there, they [have] concentration camps. What's the difference?

And another comments:

The Nazis got rid of all that trade union rubbish. Believe me, no workers strike in Germany and everyone’s kept in line.

Despite these and other chilling statements he overhears, later that evening Stevens says to a fellow butler:

In my philosophy, a man cannot call himself well-contented until he has done all he can to be in service to his employer. Of course, this assumes one's employer is a superior person, not only in rank or wealth, but in moral stature.

Quite taken aback, the other butler says:

In your opinion, what's going on up there has moral stature, does it? I've heard some very fishy things, Mr. Stevens, very fishy!

Stevens: I hear nothing. To listen to the gentlemen's conversations would distract me from my work.

Many men might think that Stevens and his refusal to see what is going on before his eyes is very foreign, but every man needs to ask: "How much does it really matter to me that there are many people in this world who are suffering? Is there any relation between my not being too interested in the feelings of a terrified child in Iraq, or an unemployed worker in the Midwest, and how I see a girlfriend or wife? And while I may think through coldness I’m taking care of myself, might I be harming myself--including hurting tremendously the possibilities of love in my life?"

Aesthetic Realism says definitely if we are not interested in knowing the feelings of people as such, it greatly impedes us from knowing and caring for one person.

At a certain point, Darlington tells Stevens that two German Jewish servant girls must be fired because their dark features are offensive to his guests. For once, we see a flicker of real feeling cross Stevens' face as he offers a mild protest. However, as soon as Darlington shows displeasure, Stevens quickly acquiesces. When he informs Miss Kenton, she expresses horror at Darlington's decision and shows she despises Stevens for his casual manner in telling it. She says:

I'm amazed that you can stand there as if you were discussing orders from the larder. If those girls have no work, they could be sent back to Germany. If you dismiss them, it will be wrong, a sin as much as there ever was one!

Stevens coolly replies:

There are many things that you and I don't understand in the world today whereas his Lordship understands fully, including the nature of Jewry.

I believe a very valuable thing about "The Remains of the Day" is that it illustrates what Aesthetic Realism explains: there is a beautiful, strict justice about love. If we do not want to be full out against evil and ugliness, including in ourselves, we won’t be able to have the love we’re hoping for.

And the converse is also true: It is only when we want to use all of ourselves passionately, happily on behalf of what is fair and kind, will we be closer to caring deeply for another. That is what is shown in Richard Lovelace’s great 17th century English poem: "To Lucasta, on Going to the Wars." Ellen Reiss, teacher of the class "The Aesthetic Realism Explanation of Poetry", said of it:

There is hardly a more important poem on love. [because it says:] Unless you want to fight for justice, you're unequipped to love a person.

In it, a man tells Lucasta, a woman he is close to, that he must leave her to go into battle. But he says she shouldn’t be angry with him because through defeating injustice, he will love her more. Here is the poem with its famous two last lines:

Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As thou too shalt adore;
I could not love thee, Dear, so much,
Loved I not Honour more.

Because Aesthetic Realism understands and criticizes the narrow self in all of us that wants to care only for ourselves and have small, diluted feeling for everything else, it gloriously makes possible the real, passionate, complete love every person is hoping for.

What Do Fathers and Sons Really Want From Each Other?

My life changed deeply and beautifully because I learned from Aesthetic Realism that the way we think about people, how we see them is crucial for our happiness. And the reason is: our deepest desire is to like the world, see it truly, and every person, and very much a parent, represents that wide, vast world.

The way every person most wants to be seen and thought about was described by Eli Siegel when he said:

People are reality when most complete; reality when aware of itself. The importance of people is that they are reality in the richest form. We cannot afford to despise reality. If we do, we are giving ourselves poison....The important thing about people--with all their weaknesses, hypocrisies, mistakes, meannesses, lazinesses, grudgingnesses, inertias, pretences--is, they are real. If, after much fuss and evolution, reality took the form of people, we have to respect that happening. ("Aesthetic Realism and People")

Once, I was a cold snob who contemptuously dismissed most of humanity, beginning with my father, as beneath me. And like many persons, I had no idea that the way I thought about people had anything to do with why I didn't like myself. I saw them superficially, only in terms of myself—if someone didn’t praise me, they were against me? "[A] phase of disrespect," Mr. Siegel explains in The Right Of:

is the unwillingness to see someone as having an inner life he is aware of. The most fashionable way of not giving respect to a person is not giving him full, busy, deep consciousness. (81, 5)

I. HOW WE THINK ABOUT THE FIRST PEOPLE IN OUR LIVES

By about the age of seven, I had made up my mind that I didn't like my father, Sam Weiner. Even while he could sometimes swing me in his arms, and was gentle when I was sick, I saw him as remote and gruff and as sternly "laying down the law." I wasn't interested in what my father's worries were; I felt that he was against me--and, without knowing it, I used him to make a case against the world and other people. I was so far away from seeing Sam Weiner in the beautiful, deep way Eli Siegel saw what a father feels and goes through. In "Mind and Fathers," he writes:

Fathers do have two motives towards their children. They cannot, as father, admit that they're confused. They cannot see that a child is after the same thing they are. They cannot, therefore, put together pride and humility, the desire to learn and the desire to teach. (349, 4)

Early in my father’s life, his own father abandoned their family, and Sam Weiner had to go to work in his teens to help support his mother and mentally ill brother. Every once in a while I had a glimmer of feeling for what my father had been through, but these moments were few, and forgotten by me as soon as he raised his voice. “There he goes again,” I would say under my breath.

I never even attempted to understand what my father felt about the hostility and coldness between him and my mother. Instead, I encouraged her and my two brothers to be angry with him: and tried to convince them that we would be better off if he left and never came back.

Since I had a tremendous "unwillingness" to think about my father's "inward life," I missed the fact that he didn’t like himself for the way he was ill-natured and aloof. Like most sons, I spent a lot of time trying to prove how different I was from him, how much better. "I'll never be like him," I often said. Both of us would learn years later that we deeply agreed the world was unfriendly, and that we should have little to do with other people--and this attitude was what caused both of us much pain.

As much as I tried to blame my father for everything wrong in my life--my unhappiness and unsureness, I felt very guilty about him. That, I learned, is inevitable when we are unfair to a person. I was extremely nervous in my father's presence and could never look him in the eye. And because I didn't want and didn't know how, to be a critic of my ill will, there was another emotion I couldn't make sense of. In Self and World, Mr. Siegel explains:

Since [the feeling of guilt] is unbearable, we may change the sense that the cause of the pain is in ourselves to the sense that it is caused by an external object. Once, however, we see the world as giving us pain, we can see it as giving us pain in the future. This has to do with the existence of a pervasive, vague and constant fear....

I had that "pervasive" fear. But I never made any association between sneering at my father and then cowering before him; how I spoke disparagingly of him, and then would get anxious at the thought of facing him again.

II. I LEARNED WHAT MY FATHER MOST WANTED FROM ME

In the Aesthetic Realism classes I attended, Mr. Siegel was a kind critic of how I saw people. In one class, he asked me what I had most against my father, and I said he was tyrannical and also aloof. Mr. Siegel then asked:

ES: So, because he was not interested in you, you paid him back by not being interested in him?

SW: That's what I've done.

ES: Is that wise? When you retaliate, make sure the effect is good on you.

I began to see it wasn't wise. And starting with my father, I learned what he and every person most hope for—to be seen deeply, from within—as a relation of sameness and difference from other people. Mr. Siegel also asked me:

ES: Do you think that when your father quarreled with your mother, he felt his knowledge of women was insufficient?

SW: He must have.

ES: Do you think he had some reason for self-doubt?

This was a revelation! It had never occurred to me that my father could be unsure about anything. "I think so," I said.
Mr. Siegel continued:

ES: Did he know how to use his doubt of himself?

SW: No.

ES: Do you know how?

SW: I don't.

I thank Mr. Siegel for the way he encouraged me to be fair to the depths of Sam Weiner.

I'll never forget the day I asked Sam Weiner questions about his life--and how amazed he was to see the son who had been so scornful, really interested in him! He told me later that that was the first time "You treated me like I was a human being." He was so affected by how I had changed that he began to have Aesthetic Realism consultations to learn about himself. In time, we were able to talk deeply with each other, and he trusted me more because he saw I wanted to know him. I no longer felt intimidated; and even began to have a sense of humor with him. Through Mr. Siegel's good will, I came to love Sam Weiner. As the way I thought about my father changed so did the way I saw people as such. Instead of being driven to prove I was superior, I saw that I liked myself much more for being interested in people, and trying to make them stronger.

III. HE USED HIS FATHER TO HATE THE WHOLE WORLD

The 1993 film In the Name of the Father deals largely with the turbulent relation between a young Irish man, Gerry Conlon and his father, Guiseppe. I feel the film itself is confused about the long, brutal conflict between Northern Ireland and England, which I say carefully will not end until Aesthetic Realism is studied. Meanwhile, for the purpose of this paper, I will speak about one aspect of it--the deep fight that goes on in this son between seeing his father fairly and having wholesale contempt for him.

In "Aesthetic Realism and People," Mr. Siegel said:

Before you start hating anybody, try to understand what makes him confused, and you will find, perhaps, that there is more confusion than just animosity. Very few people are given to animosity and nothing else. They're trying to be happy, and somewhere they meet confusion.

Based loosely on a true story, Gerry, played by Daniel Day-Lewis, is a reckless and insolent petty thief living in war-torn Belfast, in Northern Ireland in 1974. We see early that Gerry is confused by and very angry with his father, Guiseppe, a quiet, hardworking man, played by Pete Postlethwaite--who he sees as righteous and severely judgmental.

Hoping to keep Gerry out of trouble, Guiseppe, who suffers from a respiratory illness resulting from his work in a factory, sends him to London to stay with an aunt. When Gerry is boarding the ferry, his father handing him some cash, says "Go then son¼ Remember, honest money goes further." Then Gerry does what so many sons have, he mocks his father, saying to himself: "Honest money goes further. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. He had a cliché for every occasion. I had to run up the gangplank to get away from him." But Gerry feels remorseful, and tries to call "goodbye, Da" to his father, who by this time is out of earshot.

Soon after Gerry arrives in London, a local pub is bombed and people die. Because he is Irish and poor and in the wrong place at the wrong time, the English police assume Gerry is guilty, and under tremendous pressure from an outraged public to find the bombers, they try to torture him into confessing. But it is only when they threaten to have his father killed, that Gerry signs a paper saying he is guilty.

One of the film's most moving scenes illustrates what Aesthetic Realism explains: there's a tremendous desire on the part of a person to use another person close to us, very often a member of our family, to hate whole world and despise other people. In an Aesthetic Realism Lesson, Mr. Siegel spoke to a young man about the fight that went on in him between seeing his father a friend, but also as his "greatest enemy." These two ways of seeing, Mr. Siegel explained:

[I]nstead of being an opportunity for people, make them feel the whole world is false, because the person who is for you [you] also [see] as so much against you....We come to the conclusion, "My parent doesn't make sense; therefore the universe is senseless."

This, I have learned, is clearly an inaccurate and hurtful conclusion, and it is not inevitable! A father wants to be used to know the world, and to like it--not as a justification for being against everything and everyone. But that is just what Gerry Conlon has done.

Gerry is in jail awaiting trial, when suddenly, the cell door opens, and his father is brought in. "What the hell are you doing here?" Gerry asks in rage. Giuseppe tells him that on his arrival in London to find him a lawyer, he was arrested as a conspirator in the bombing. Gerry’s immediate reaction is gratitude to his father but he swiftly changes it into fury, and goes on a tirade, saying:

Ge: Why do you always follow me when I do something wrong?

Gu: What are you talking about?

And then Gerry brings up a memory from his childhood.

Ge: I'm talking about the medal.

Gu: What medal?

Ge: The only medal that I ever won--at soccer. And you sat on the sidelines shouting instructions at me. You couldn't even play soccer. You could only see what I was doing wrong on the field…

Gu: This is a shock!

GE: For once in our lives, my team won but you ruined it all for me....That's when I started to rob--the proof that I was no good. I've been like this since I was 7. I knew I was bad. I started to tell lies, the same lies I've been telling my whole life. It doesn't matter because I'm no good. (Guiseppe moves towards son.) Keep away from me.

Gerry lets go with a series of brutally contemptuous insults, then begins slapping himself, and screaming at his father to strike him, saying "I'm no good! Hit me! I’m no good!"

At their trial, both Conlons are found guilty and given long sentences. At first, as they spend many hours in a cell together, Gerry ridicules Guiseppe's deep religious faith and his seeming passivity. He uses a gang of angry, rebellious prisoners he takes drugs with against Guiseppe, saying to him: "At least they fight back, more than you ever did in your life." Meanwhile it is Guiseppe who initiates a campaign to publicize their unjust conviction that Gerry scoffs at as a waste of time.

As the film continues, we see the cover up by the government after the real bombers of the pub are found. But Guiseppe refuses to become cynical, and this affects Gerry very much. He also sees that the other prisoners have come to have a real care for his father. Gerry tells his lawyer, played by Emma Thompson, that "Guiseppe always recognized the good in people."

But it is only after the warden is viciously attacked by the gang Gerry had seen as his friends, that Gerry realizes how wrong he had been: he made into nothing what he should have valued so much: his father's belief in justice and decency. Gerry stops using drugs, and joins in Guiseppe's campaign to clear their names.

In the Lesson I quoted from earlier, Mr. Siegel also said to the young man:

Have good will for your father [and you] will cleanse your life. You won't be nervous, and you will have good will for other people. Good will is the doing all you can not to weaken a person and doing all that which would strengthen a person.

Gerry begins to take better care of Guiseppe. With humor and patience he helps his father, now gravely ill, take medicine for his breathing. In one scene, trying to encourage Giuseppe not to lose heart, Gerry tells him about a memory he has--and this is so different from the scornful, disparaging way he talked earlier.

Ge: What I remember most about my childhood is holding my wee hand in your big hand. Even now, I can smell the tobacco in the palm of your hand.

Fighting back tears, his father says weakly: "Hold my hand."

Guiseppe dies in prison. But while this is heartbreaking, we also feel that a victory has taken place because of the large change in how his son saw him. When the other prisoners learn of Guiseppe's death, in honor of him, they take strips of paper, light them with matches, and drop them from their cell windows--and as these burning wads float down, they illuminate the black courtyard. There is a relation of dark and light, brilliance and fadingness that I believe is beautiful. And because of the persistence and conviction of his lawyer, Gerry gets a new trial and his and his father's names are cleared.

IV. I GOT WHAT I MOST WANTED BY SEEING WHAT MY FATHER MOST WANTED FROM ME

Some years ago I was facing a situation that many people are facing now: the illness of an elderly parent. In such a situation, a person can have all kinds of emotions: pity, guilt, anger, fear, and a big tendency to see the world as cruel.

In 1992, when my father's health was deteriorating, I am grateful that because of what I was learning, I was I able to be useful to him, even as I was very much affected, and could sometimes sink. In a class, when I spoke about having a drive to feel "This is all too much for me," Ellen Reiss encouraged me to like thinking about my father. Among the questions she asked me were: "Do you want to have a certain steadiness and depth of thought about another person which has not been enough in your life?" And she said: "What your father is asking for from you is to go further than you have ever gone."

"That's what I want to do," I said.

ER: The question is: Is that good for you? It's terrible that it's in this form, but you do have a chance to respect yourself.

This discussion made for an urgency in me to be deeper about my father. And he was grateful and said so.

I feel what I have learned through this will enable me to be useful to men all over America. Aesthetic Realism can teach us how to be proud of our thought about other people, beginning with a parent; this is the most emergent and most hopeful fact in the world!