Toughness & a Feeling Heart—Can a Man Have Both?
First presented in a public seminar at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, New York City.

Every man wants to feel he's strong—that he's sharp, can take care of himself and not be pushed around. We also want to have large feelings, be swept by the beauty and honesty of a woman, the grandeur of a sunset.

Can we have both toughness and big feelings, can we be strong and tender, even sensitive? I've seen the answer is yes, and the thing that makes it possible is the purpose Aesthetic Realism shows is our deepest: to know and like the world.

When we have a steady desire to see the facts, it makes us keen, intellectually solid, and it is also the very thing that enables a man to be moved, affected, to have the feelings he wants. And "the greatest feeling," Eli Siegel wrote, "is the feeling that we are getting along with the world in general."

That is in fierce competition with the drive in a man to see the world as an antagonist he has to beat. This is contempt, and it makes for a kind of toughness that's dangerous and hurts our lives tremendously. Mr. Siegel described where this begins when he wrote:

It can carefully be said that people are in a constant contest between the desire to feel more and the desire to feel as little as possible. It happens that with every disappointment in life, there is some desire to feel less...According to Aesthetic Realism, there is a great tendency to get distinction from the fact that the world is not on our side.

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