EDWARD GREEN 
COMPOSER, MUSIC EDUCATOR / NEW YORK CITY  
What Does a Person Deserve? 
BY EDWARD GREEN
Part 1

In an article I wrote--"Contempt: the Cause of Racism"--for the magazine U.S. African Eye, I quoted this urgent, kind question asked by Eli Siegel, the great American educator who founded the philosophy of Aesthetic Realism: 

"What does a person deserve by being a person?"
 This is the most important question in the world today. Aesthetic Realism, for the first time, makes it clear and conscious; but on every continent, wherever people are fighting for social and economic justice, this question is at the heart of it. And, as I want to show in this month's column by looking at two contemporary short stories of Africa, what a person deserves from us is likewise the central matter in family life--in how a husband sees his wife; a child, his grandfather. 

How Should People See Other People?

"The most important thing about every person," Eli Siegel wrote in 1973 in the international journal The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known, "is that he comes from, represents, and is related to, the whole universe." All art arises from and stands for this deep, wide, respectful way of seeing. And yet, Mr. Siegel explained, there is a drive in everyone--which he identified as the hope for contempt--to make ourselves important by seeing other people as existing only for our comfort, glory and superiority. 

These two possibilities of mind, I learned, are what humanity now is debating: Should we hope to increase our respect for other people, or to see them with contempt? And it is plain, there can be no lasting kindness in a family or economic justice in a nation until that debate is settled honestly. 

A story which powerfully illustrates the fight between contempt and respect--and how it has to do both with economics and family life--is "In the Hospital," by the Liberian author Similih M. Cordor, published in Charles Larson's valuable 1997 anthology, Under African Skies (Noonday Press, NY.) Mr. Cordor's story is, among other things, a criticism of how the medical profession is corrupted by the desire to make profit. 

It is hard to imagine anything less civilized than a society in which sick people and their families, terrified of what may happen to them, have to worry that a doctor, or a hospital, may be less interested in their well-being than in their money. Yet this is the case in America, Liberia, and many other nations of the world. 

As the story begins, Kollie, a 45 year old carpenter who has brought his family to Monrovia in search of work, comes home from the shop to find his wife, Marwu, who is pregnant, lying coiled in pain on a mat, feeling--as she has for weeks--desperately ill. Marwu is still suffering from the effects of an operation seven months earlier; nor has she recovered from the ordeal of her last pregnancy, which, two years before, required a cesarian section. Kollie wants to be kind. Though money is tight, and medicines expensive, and his own work back-breaking, he says to his wife, who feels bad that her illness has prevented her from doing any work, "You ain't supposed to worry about money in you condition." And Marwu is worried: now that the family has only one source of income, the food supply for their young children is nearly exhausted. Maybe, she tells her husband, they can no longer afford to send money to the "old people upcountry." "I know things are hard on us," Kollie answers, "but we won't forget our own people in Voinjama 'cause they're depending on us." 

Kindness and Selfishness

Kollie is trying to be fair to what other people deserve from him. Though Marwu is terrified of returning to the hospital, where she nearly died before, he insists that they go. He is worried about her safety and that of the child to be; but his conscience is troubled. Cordor explains:  Kollie didn't want to admit to himself that his strong desire for another son had been the main reason for wanting Marwu to get pregnant, even though she wasn't willing because of the cesarean section. What men and women everywhere are yearning for, Aesthetic Realism makes resplendently clear, is to be seen with good will, which Eli Siegel described as: "the hope that good things happen to things (things include people); with the desire to know what those good things are." Kollie feels the more sons he has, the more impressive he will be. Because of this, he is not interested deeply in seeing what is best for his wife. Kollie was willing to risk her life to swell his own importance. 

Though it takes different forms in different societies, men all over the world have felt we had a right to impose our will on women--to see them as "lesser" beings who existed to serve us, make us comfortable. This attitude to women--that they exist for our selfish advantage--is evil; it is akin, essentially, to other large evils in history: slavery, colonialism, and the profit system, where people see other people in terms of financial advantage. "The first victory of contempt," Eli Siegel writes in the "Preface" to Self and World (Definition Press, NY. 1981): 

is the feeling in people that they have the right to see other people and things pretty much as they please. ...The fact that most people have felt...they had the right to see other people in a way that seemed to go with comfort--this fact is the beginning of the injustice and pain of the world. It is contempt in its first universal, hideous form. It is part of Cordor's artistic power that we see the irony of Kollie's life. As a husband, he has insisted on having his way with his wife; but as a worker, he is the recipient of contempt--it is he whose needs and feelings are scorned. Though he works long, hard hours to make money for the boss, his family of six can only afford a "dimly lit single room." And he's afraid he's going to have to pawn the little furniture they have to pay for Marwu's stay at the hospital. He tells a doctor: "My bossman ain't give me any medical insurance." 
 
 
 To Continue: Part 2
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