I learned from Aesthetic Realism that a man needs to do all he can to understand his anger in order to be proud of himself. And the main thing we need to understand is that we have two completely different kinds of anger. In his lecture, Aesthetic Realism And Anger, Eli Siegel said:
In a good anger we are fighting for the beauty of the world. In a bad anger we don’t give a damn about the beauty of the world. The anger that is good is really an anger that is the desire to be pleased. But the anger that’s bad is the desire to see the world as bad.
That desire to see the world as bad is contempt, and when it fuels a man’s anger, though it has him feel decisive and tough, it also makes him reckless and mean. It undermines a man’s life because it is against his deepest desire—to like the world.
Anger in the Sunshine State
I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, and I worked very hard to not show myself as angry. In fact, I prided myself on being an easy-going guy. What Chairman of Education of Aesthetic Realism, Ellen Reiss, once said about me humorously was true—that I presented myself as “the most affable youth that Florida ever produced.”
But inside I was angry—for instance, at things I saw go on in my family. The way my mother and father could seem for and against each other didn’t make sense—they were warm and affectionate at one moment, and irritated and sarcastic with each other the next. Aesthetic Realism shows that the way we see the first people we know closely is central in how we come to see the whole world, because early they stand for the world to us. What Mr. Siegel said in his lecture is true about the way I saw my parents: “The sight of the world deeply, since we cannot make sense of it, is a sight making for anger.”
I also used my parents’ pain to be a little politician—currying favor with one, then the other, so they would buy me things I wanted. Once I got my mother to buy me two new pairs of pants. They were beautifully made, but when she wouldn’t let me get them tailored in the style of the day—tight—I threw a fit and they sat in the closet, hardly ever worn.
In his lecture, Mr. Siegel said:
What differentiates a handsome anger from an ugly anger is whether the anger is narrowly personal, is all for the advancement of ego in its separation, or is for something beautiful and just, sustained by space, time, and history.
My angers were “narrowly personal.” I don’t remember ever being angry in behalf of justice or something large in the world—I didn’t even know there was such a thing.
In college as an acting major at Syracuse University, I was cast in a production of Summer Brave by William Inge, which was a rewrite of his earlier play, Picnic. At rehearsals the director kept criticizing me because he couldn’t hear me from out in the audience. I got furious—”What the hell does he want from me!” I said to myself. “Doesn’t he know I’ll come through on opening night!? I’m ‘acting’ the part right—what’s the big deal about not hearing me every once in a while!”
That was representative of my anger generally: if someone didn’t treat me like a wonderful, special being, and had the gall to criticize me, I was enraged.
The way my angers were small and vain held up my life and also interfered with my acting. I had a very hard time showing anger on stage and dreaded any scene that required it. Once, in a role on a TV soap opera, I had to get furious with someone and threaten her life. I had a lot of trouble on the set that day, and felt ashamed of my performance.
I spoke about this in an Aesthetic Realism class and Ellen Reiss asked me, “Do you think if you hoped to be less angry, you’d be able to express it as an actor?” That was surprising but so logical—if I didn’t want to hold onto my anger I’d be able to express it outwardly. And Ms. Reiss asked, “Do you think anger belongs to the world, or just to you?” “I don’t know,” I answered, and she said, “I think you’ve seen it as a personal treasure.”
That was true. The education about the self I’ve gotten from Aesthetic Realism has freed me as a man and actor to feel and express emotions I never thought would be possible. This includes showing anger given a beautiful form in dramatic presentations with the Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company of Eli Siegel’s great lectures on the drama, including Cassius in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Through him, we see the ugliest anger in man—fury at greatness, in this case, the greatness of Caesar. Early in the play, Cassius and Brutus watch Caesar from afar, and as they do Cassius becomes inflamed and says:
Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus: as we petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about
To find ourselves dishonorable graves….
Now, in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed,
That he is grown so great?
That is a vile anger made vivid, outward, and therefore it is on the side of good.
A Contemporary Book for Men
Beyond Anger, a Guide for Men was written by psychologist Thomas J. Harbin and published in 2000. The book, says Harbin, is about “How to free yourself from the grip of anger and get more out of life.” In the introduction Harbin writes, “This is a book that I had to write…[it] helped me organize my thoughts and feelings about the role of anger in my own life,” and he says his anger almost cost him his marriage.
Men are terrifically worried their anger will get out of control, and Harbin writes about the consequences—domestic violence, lost jobs, depression. He has a real feeling for what men endure as to anger, and wants to be of use. But he doesn’t know what Aesthetic Realism explains—that we are all in a moment-to-moment battle between liking the world and having contempt for it, and that battle can take a thousand forms.
At the beginning, Harbin writes:
Most people seemed to have more fun than I did…Unlike me, most people woke up and started their days looking forward to what life would bring—or at least not actively dreading it. I, on the other hand, approached most days from the perspective of surviving.
When Harbin says most people begin their days, “looking forward to what life would bring,” it isn’t true. From the moment the alarm goes off in the morning, the battle is: is the world good for us, or is it an enemy to fight? Throughout, Harbin makes a false differentiation between what he calls “angry men” and everyone else. Said Eli Siegel in his lecture: “Wherever you mention a person, you have a set of angers. This is not exaggerated. To be alive is to be angry. The next step…is to make order out of your anger. That step is seldom taken.”
Then Harbin says, “I always assumed that things would go wrong,” and later speaks about how “angry men…dwell on, scrutinize, and replay the slip-ups, the disagreements, and the annoyances.” We can ask, why would a man do that? I learned something in me was just waiting to get evidence that the world was an irritating obstruction. And a man can hunt for proof of that as, for instance, he walks in the door at the end of the day and meets his wife, looking for something to explode about. It’s the most brutal thing in us, and always makes us mean and ashamed.
Harbin writes at one point about anger and jobs:
U.S. society does a lot to promote…anger…Today’s heavy emphasis on competition…sets men up for anger…workers are working longer and longer hours…we are enjoying ourselves less.
I agree. Our economic system which is based on the ill will, on some people making profit from the work of others, encourages a man terrific anger. Men feel they have to beat out others, to fight just to get by, pay bills, keep food on the table. And one of the large things Aesthetic Realism enables a man to understand is how to use this anger at injustice to be kinder.
A theme throughout this book is that men are angry because others have made them feel inferior. Harbin writes:
You may have come to believe several unfortunate (and mostly untrue) things about yourself…You somehow learned that you don’t deserve pleasure, that you have no right to be happy. Maybe your parents were overly shaming toward you; your teachers may have embarrassed you. Whatever the reasons, your capacity for joy has been mocked, slapped, insulted, humiliated…You may be deeply ashamed of…your imperfections…and inferiority.
Here a man is encouraged to feel that others have caused his low self esteem. But I learned—and it’s a scientific fact—that the main reason a man feels inferior and that he doesn’t deserve to be happy is because of his own ill-will. If we scorn people, feel they’re beneath us, we have to despise ourselves because we feel we’ve been unfair, and what Aesthetic Realism describes as our “ethical unconscious” will punish us.
Evidence for this is in what Harbin later explains, that “angry men,” though they feel inferior, have a heightened ability to see the flaws in others. “I had an unusual ability to see through a hypocrite,” he writes, “and since I thought that most people were hypocrites, I got a lot of practice.” He doesn’t know that this “heightened ability” is the very thing that makes a man feel lowly.
What a Man Learns in Aesthetic Realism Consultations
John Berman, a 28-year-old actor, lives in New York. Handsome and outgoing, he spoke in a consultation about how, though he presented himself as not having any problems, he didn’t feel that way. “I had no confidence,” he said, “—it was zero.”
Mr. Berman wanted to understand a deep change that took place when he was 14. Until then, he was an A student and was, as he said, “the funniest guy in the class.” But then:
John Berman. My parents were fighting a lot verbally, and I thought they would break up. My brother and I would witness all these things. And I was getting to puberty and my skin was very bad. When I went into the bathroom, I didn’t turn on the light because I didn’t want to see myself in the mirror.
Consultants. Did you feel this was an indication that reality was against you in some way?
John Berman. Yeah, I thought the whole world was against me.
Consultants. Do you think if a person feels the world deals him a bad hand, he can do two things—go into himself, become morose, and also explode angrily? You go away from the world and also lash out at it? Can you make sense of those two things in yourself?
John Berman. I don’t think so.
Mr. Berman described how, in his mind, he thought his classmates were making fun of him, “even if I didn’t have any reason to believe that.” It made him want to punch the walls. “Did something in you leap to that feeling that everbody was an enemy?” we asked:
John Berman. Yes—I wanted to protect myself.
Consultants. But do you think there’s a hope in a man to find that the world is a disgusting mess. Then you get a little evidence, you go “Aha!”—you’re miserable, but also feel triumphant?
John Berman. Yeah, I was—right.
Consultants. You felt everybody was looking down on you. But in any way did you look down on them?
John Berman. Yeah, I felt people were superficial.
Consultants. And you made a kingdom of your own?
John Berman saw that that was true. As he questioned his purpose in being angry, he began to change. There was much more to respect in the world than he had seen. Instead of imagining that people were out to humiliate him, he began—and this was also useful to him as an actor—to see the feelings of people, their thoughts, as interesting and deeply dramatic. Some time later he wrote to us:
Thank you for the criticism you gave me. It helped me make sense of things that confused me and hurt my life. I feel more and more that the world is my friend, and have much more hope. I change dramatically from consultation to consultation…I see things differently, like a beautiful tree, women, a play, people…I’m grateful to have Aesthetic Realism on my side on this very pleasant trip!
Why Men Are Angry in Love
I wanted a woman to treat me like a prince whom she was lucky to have found. When she didn’t, and had the nerve to show she had some objection to me, I was furious.
Aesthetic Realism taught me the purpose that can make a man him proud of himself in love—to use knowing and being close to a woman to care more for the whole world, for people. Learning what that means can turn a man’s life around—it did mine, and I’m still learning.
In Beyond Anger, Thomas Harbin says men get angry because “Women tend to think differently than men…their emotions are different…they are unfamiliar, and therefore potentially threatening.” As a result, he says, men are in:
An approach-avoidance conflict over women…when a person is drawn toward a situation because of the benefits but at the same time wishes to avoid the situation because of its unpleasant characteristics.
What Harbin calls an “approach-avoidance conflict” is, I believe, a way of saying that we are both for and against caring for someone. There’s that in a man that wants to be swept by the powerful loveliness of a woman, and feel she completes him. But that very thing has made men angry—”I need something not me to be more myself? It’s insulting!” With that state of mind, men have looked for something wrong in their girlfriends or wives and picked fights with them to justify being angry.
I learned about this in an Aesthetic Realism class some years ago, when I spoke about the woman who is now my wife and whom I love very much, Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman. I was having very large feelings for Meryl, but then would get suspicious of her. Ellen Reiss said:
Ellen Reiss. You are a keen, sharp, “nobody-is-going-to-pull-the-wool-over-my-eyes” person. But you also want to see a sunrise. Do you think your suspicion of Miss Nietsch is at one with your big feeling about her?
Bennett Cooperman. No.
Ellen Reiss. Does that make you mad at her?
Bennett Cooperman. Yes.
Ellen Reiss. She’s got some nerve! You’ve got her number, and then you find you have a large feeling about her.
That was true—I wanted everything clear and uncomplicated. And I was angry that Meryl had a whole life of her own that I couldn’t easily understand. Ms. Reiss asked whether I liked Meryl being, as every woman is, complex, deep, subtle, or did I want to “shape her up.” And she asked:
Are you more comfortable being swept by her or finding things wrong with her? How would you do with the Marlowe line, “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships?”
Seeing vividly I had a hope to be suspicious and angry, which would have undermined everything, changed me. I love my wife, her kind, beautiful face, and the impulsion she has to have good will for the people she knows, and also to be a critic of herself. Studying Aesthetic Realism together is the greatest gift for any man and woman.
Anger Can Be Beautiful
I once thought all anger was bad, and a person should avoid having it. But I learned we need to have a beautiful, big anger at injustice—a crucial matter at this time in history. That anger always strengthens the person having it. And Mr. Siegel showed that when anger is just, it’s not sloppy. He said:
Wherever an anger seems to have no shape to it…seems to be like angry marshmallow, or spaghetti on the loose, we can be pretty sure that…its basis is a false one. A beautiful emotion has form to it…a sense of limitation and boundlessness.
That form you feel in a simple but searing poem by Carl Sandburg, titled “Buttons.” It was published in 1915 in the midst of the First World War. In its indictment of that war, and somewhat the press, it has a horrible and meaningful relevance today. This is the poem.
Buttons
I have been watching the war map slammed up for
advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons—red and yellow buttons—blue and black buttons—
are shoved back and forth across the map.A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one
inch west.(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
to us?
Men today need to understand their anger so the terrible scene told of here by Sandburg doesn’t go on and on, and the world can be safe. Aesthetic Realism enables men to be proud of the way we have and express anger, and to have rich, proud lives. It’s done that for me, and I am grateful with all my heart.