What Kind of Emotions Are Men Looking For?
First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

"Do you think everyone is in a fight between great emotion and little emotion?" That is a question I was asked in one of the classes I attend for Aesthetic Realism consultants and associates, taught by Ellen Reiss.

And the answer, I've learned, is yes. The deepest purpose of every person, Aesthetic Realism shows, is to like the world. That emotion—like of the world on an honest, factual basis—is what men look for in every particular thing we do, whether it's reading a book or holding the woman we care for in our arms.

But unknowingly, men also go for emotions that arise from a very different source. Eli Siegel, the founder of Aesthetic Realism, has explained that source—it is contempt, the "disposition in every person to think he will be for himself by making less of the outside world." In The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known titled "The Emotion Hoped For," Mr. Siegel writes:

There is a fight going on every moment in the minds of persons as to whether to respect the world and be grateful for its existence or to see the world as senseless, disorderly and deeply to be angry with it. This...is the largest matter in man's unconscious.

In this paper I'll talk about what I learned about that fight in me, and how, through study of Aesthetic Realism, I have emotions now that make me so happy. I'm very thankful for my education because I was a person who went for small, selfish emotions, and felt more numb and miserable with every year.

I'll speak too about a contemporary book that is representative of the men's movement, The Warrior's Journey home by Jed Diamond.

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