Why am I bored? Are things just a drag or is it me? I once asked myself these questions a lot as women and men people do the world over. Despite joining professional organizations, volunteering to work on political campaigns, taking continuing education classes, and an active social life, I still had a pervasive feeling that life was blah.
When I began to study Aesthetic Realism, the education founded in 1941 by the American poet and philosopher, Eli Siegel, my boredom ended forever! I came to see meaning and excitement in the everyday world that I never imagined possible. Things themselves are hardly boring. It was the way I saw things that made for my boredom. And I learned this crucial thing: I was bored because I had contempt for things and people. Eli Siegel defined contempt as, "the addition to self through the lessening of something else."
Contempt is against the deepest desire every person has, which, Aesthetic Realism explains, is to like the world on an honest basis by seeing it aesthetically—as a oneness of opposites. "To be bored by the world is wearisome," writes Eli Siegel, "but that is a victory for the individual. …. Being bored is a victory for ubiquitous contempt." (Self and World, Definition Press, 1981, www.definitionpress.org) I came to see that as I sat in a room full of people and thought to myself: "There is no one interesting to talk to. They’re all so dull"—even while this was painful—I was having a dreary victory, seeing myself as distinctive and superior to all those people. It was through studying in Aesthetic Realism consultations that I learned how an attitude to the world I had, based on contempt, was making me feel less alive. For example, my consultants asked me:
"Do you think you have a desire to annul things?"
Maureen Butler: "The situation at hand?"
Consultants: "To annul everything. Do you tend to see things as individual or as all the same?"
MB: "You mean everything else is the same?"
Consultants: "Yes. You’re different; everything else is the same. That is the basis for boredom."
They explained: "The reason you feel, as Eli Siegel puts in it in his poem, 'The Misery Song', that your life is ‘one gray minute after minute’ is that you don’t distinguish among things, don’t see that each thing has the world’s structure in it."
"The way to like the world and the things in it," Mr. Siegel stated, "is to see both as the aesthetic oneness of opposites."
My consultants gave me this assignment: Look at an object each day and ask if this was true—did it put opposites together? If I saw that it did, did I like it more? I was thrilled to see it was true! An ordinary kitchen blender with its bright colors outside--yellow, white and chrome—and its utilitarian, more businesslike colors inside--gray, brown, black--put together inside and outside and also beauty and usefulness, opposites every woman--and every person--is trying to put together, including me!
People too, began to look friendlier to me. I saw that a co-worker was also trying to put together how she appeared outside and what she felt inside. And, like me, she was also hoping to have sweetness and severity, seriousness and liveliness, freedom and restraint in the best relation in herself. I felt a new closeness and interest in other people and as a result I had more friends. The everyday world—a busy coffee shop at 8 AM, a black iron railing with white snow on it--had more amiability and wonder. The study of Aesthetic Realism makes it possible for everyone to see meaning in the world right under our noses!
I learned so much more in consultations that people everywhere need and would love to learn too!--for example, what makes love go wrong and how it can go right. Consultations such as the one I describe here are taught by a faculty of consultants in person and via telephone throughout the United States and abroad at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, a not-for-profit educational foundation at 141 Greene Street in New York City, 212-777-4490. For more information, visit:
Aesthetic Realism: A New Perspective for Anthropology
Len Bernstein: Photographic Education Based on Aesthetic Realism Aesthetic Realism Encourages Self-Expression
Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company in New York City
Definition Press: Books by Eli Siegel and about Aesthetic Realism
Aesthetic Realism in the News
Aesthetic Realism Foundation
Aesthetic Realism: or, Is a Person an Aesthetic Situation?
Lynette Abel / Aesthetic Realism and Life
The Aesthetic Realism Teaching MethodMen, Love & Sports: Aesthetic Realism Seminars by Ernest DeFilippis, ConsultantThe Terrain Gallery 
