Jimmy Cagney — or Does the Way We Fight Make Us Strong or Weak?

Do We Like to Fight?

I learned from Aesthetic Realism that something in us likes and hopes to fight, to find the world an enemy we want to be victorious over. Cagney had this ferociously. In his autobiography he boasts about the many street fights he was in. He says, "I knew how to box from the age of six," and that these fights were necessary for a boy to get by.

But one feels Cagney leapt to it and could be vicious. In the book Cagney, biographer Doug Warren tells of a three-day battle Cagney had with a neighborhood boy, Willie Carney. Each day the police broke it up:

Jimmy tore into him with fists ripping at his face and body...his...punches [were] venomous...The next afternoon Carney was waiting at the appointed time and place...By the time the police once more arrived, Jimmy's clothes were crimson from Carney's blood.

Writes Doug Warren, "By using his fists Jimmy could cut the big kids down to size." I think it wasn't just the "big kids" Cagney was trying to cut down to size—it was the whole world, and this contemptuous state of mind is not unlike that in young person who carry weapons in schools today. It is what makes for the fights between family members in ordinary homes across America.

In Aesthetic Realism consultations we have asked men questions such as these: "Which do you prefer—fighting with your father or learning from him, having him be useful to you? When do you feel tough, when you're grateful or angry? What are you prouder of, intimidating someone or wanting to know them?"

Through consultations, men learn to criticize that dangerous hope to fight; and their deepest desire, to like the world, flourishes.

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