The aesthetic way of seeing is needed for respect to flourish among people of different cultures or races. This is because every prejudiced way of seeing people is unaesthetic, ugly, and comes from a contemptuous, inaccurate way of perceiving difference and sameness. Two statements, for example, that you often hear are: (1) “We’re not like them. They’re totally different from us.” ― and (2) “I know people. They’re all alike.” Here, difference and sameness are seen falsely. But the principle by Eli Siegel, “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves,” gives the means for an accurate ― a beautiful ― way of seeing people. And this is what the world needs. These 7 classes go for exactness about sameness and difference.
May 23 Culture ― Self-Expression or Straitjacket?
Sources: The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa in 19 th century Japan and A.L. Kroeber’s writing on culture as an unseen force in society.
June 6 Anger at Another Nation & at Yourself
Sources include “The Pueblos” in Patterns of Culture (Ruth Benedict) & articles in the New York Times (May 13, 2007) etc.
June 20 Telling Stories: For or Against the World
See Myths of the Cherokee (James Mooney), blogs, YouTube.com, etc.
July 4 NO CLASS ― (Makeup Class on Saturday, August 25)
July 18 Contempt vs. Respect for the Earth
Overpopulation and global warming. Sources include Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers (R. Lee & Irven DeVore, eds.) and An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore
August 1 Inflation vs. Exact Value
The opposites of inflation and exact value are in the self and in economics (both tribal and current). Sources include Habitat, Economy, & Society by C. Darryl Forde.
August 15 Every Culture Is Related to Your Own
Students in the class discuss their findings.
SATURDAY August 25 Symbols in Myth Are About You!
10 AM Metropolitan Museum of Art. Joining The Visual Arts and the Opposites class taught by Marcia Rackow we look at mythical animals and other beings.
