As someone who has visited Montreal, I was saddened to learn about the shooting that took place at Dawson College, I felt compelled to write to your paper to convey my deepest sympathies to your community for its loss. I’m grateful to say that the motivation behind all human cruelty has been understood for the first time through the important education Aesthetic Realism, founded by the great American educator Eli Siegel. Mr. Siegel showed that contempt, the addition to self through the lessening of something else, is the cause of all human injustice. Contempt can take many forms: making fun of the way someone dresses, laughing at a person when they make a mistake, ignoring a co-worker when they are talking. Taken further, contempt is what has a person deny the reality, the feelings of other people to the point they can take their life.
In an issue of the international journal, “The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known”, Ellen Reiss, the Class Chairman explained what will end all injustice: “There is no bigger emergency in the world now, both internationally and in the private life of everyone, than the matter of: What do we do when we feel we’ve been hurt? Peoples feel hurt by other peoples… by a spouse, acquaintance, co-worker. It happens, Aesthetic Realism explains, that we can arrange to see ourselves as hurt, because our being hurt seems to justify our doing anything we please, dealing with people however it suits us.” And later she wrote, “It is urgent that people learn from Aesthetic Realism what contempt is and how it works in us, because contempt is the big interference in every aspect of life. The other necessity is the study of good will as Aesthetic Realism explains it: no soft, vague, yielding thing, but the keenest, most critical, strongest thing in the world. Mr. Siegel described goodwill as ‘the desire to have something else stronger and more beautiful, for this desire makes oneself stronger and more beautiful.'” The study of goodwill is a world emergency and should begin today.
–Name Withheld, Rockaway, New York
