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"Countering
the Lies":
The
Aesthetic Realism Foundation strikes back!
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What they say about us:
“So
much for the stupid lying of Mali, Bluejay and the
other liars....
Why is he doing this? Feeling himself to be a
failure in his own life, and joining with
others also seeking revenge for essentially the
same reason--notably Adam Mali--"Michael Bluejay"
seeks the triumph of making himself important by
looking down upon others. He is attempting to
assuage his feeling of unimportance by attacking
the persons and philosophy he very well realizes
best represent truth and beauty.”
-- Marvin Mondlin, AR believer,
on CounteringTheLies
So much for the AR philosophy of not having
contempt for others! My own critique of AR is
limited to their actions and beliefs, not personal
insults. I never call them "liars" (I'll let the
reader judge that for themselves from my evidence),
and I never say mean things such as that an AR
believer "feels himself to be a failure in his own
life".
Mondlin's statement above, and those of the
other members on Countering The Lies, tells
you everything you need to know about how well AR
deals with differences of opinion. Critics of
AR are personally attacked and publicly
insulted.
So much for tolerating criticism.
(And as for whether I'm really a liar...the
mountain of evidence on the website you're reading
now suggests otherwise.)
[Update: The AR people have since quietly
taken down the quoted bit about from Mondlin's
missive on their site. But they've certainly never
apologized for it. And of course all the other
insults throughout their site remain
intact.]
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A bit of background: This website started as
a single page in July 2004, without too much on it,
and without too much effort on my part to put up. I simply
wanted to document this weird part of my former life, and
perhaps warn others away from Aesthetic Realism, although I
honestly I knew the chances that I would do so were pretty
remote. Let's be realistic: AR is still a very small group
after decades of self-promotion so most people will never
encounter it. Besides, most people already know how to stay
away from cults anyway, and they don't need me to tell them
how. Realistically, the chances of someone stumbling across
my site who was vulnerable and who would run across
AR were very, very small.
But if there's one thing
cult members are good at it's being unrealistic. Combine
that with their fear of persecution and their belief that
their philosophy is the most important thing in the world
and you know they're gonna respond in a big way. And they
did. The Aesthetic Realism Foundation put up a whole big
website on a brand-new domain, CounteringTheLies.com,
to try to refute the criticism they found via my little
page. Much of their effort was spent vilifying Adam Mali,
whose statement I simply linked to on another website. They
were evidently unaware that Mali's statement had already
been on the net for at least four years prior. Anyway,
though most of their charges of "Liar! Liar!" are directed
at Mali, much of it is directed at me.
I have to admit that I'm
more amused than annoyed by this. After all, my
reputation is fairly well-known. While I have strong
opinions and many people disagree with me, I can't recall
any other time in my life when someone has accused me of
lying. Does it say something that the only people
calling me a liar are the members or supporters of the cult
I criticize? You betcha.
Of course, the opposite
is not true: While AR people are the only ones saying
I'm a liar, I'm not the only one saying that AR is a cult.
People were saying that long before I was born. Eli Siegel
even referenced it in the lesson I had with him when I was
two years old:
Eli Siegel: The
answer now is, when Aesthetic Realism is called a cult,
you say "You're wrong. It brings cults together."
[LAUGHTER FROM COMPANY]
In a sense it's hilarious that
AR went to the effort to refute my one little page and the
handful of fellow critics I linked to by putting up their
big Countering the Lies website. What they should
have done was to ignore it. Who cares about my little site?
Who would see my page? Who would even believe it without it
being better documented and without having heard the other
side of the story? Big deal.
But the AR people didn't
see it that way, and CounteringTheLies.com was their
response.
At first when I saw it I
decided I would let it go. While I could spend my time
refuting their charges of my being a liar, and while it was
nice that I had a ready-made excuse to expand my little web
page, was it the best use of my time? I decided it
wasn't.
But then I saw something on
their site that changed my mind: They went after my
mom.
In fact, they think she's
behind this website somehow, although she didn't even know I
put it up until she got a call from an angry cult member --
her sister, Alice Bernstein, who hadn't talked to my mother
for over twenty years before that. (And we saw what it took
to get her to do so!) Here's the hate mail an AR apologist
sent to me mother (anonymously and with a fake email
address, of course):
I studied Aesthetic
Realism for only 9 months, and I could tell that it is an
incredible philosophy. You are so cruel to your son, as
you use him to get back at what you respect so much, yet
can't be superior to, and making him look like an angry
old man, and a stupid one at that. Your ego has taken
over you. I am your son's age and I am glad that I have a
mother and father who understood my study of Aesthetic
Realism. YOU know Aesthetic Realism is not a cult, but
you probably ARE a cultist.
I whithold my name because you
and your son seem so bitter and nasty.
That last line ought to win some kind of award for
irony.
Anyway, I wrote to Alice
and the Aesthetic Realists saying that they could say
whatever they wanted about me, but they should leave my
mother out of it. I said that they could make their
point 100% without dragging her name through it, and that
there was no need to play dirty. Naturally they refused.
They said that they'd take her name off that page if I
took my entire site down! How's that for tolerating
criticism? Incidentally, one of the things I'm supposedly
"lying" about is saying that AR doesn't tolerate criticism
of AR at all. But here they rather proved my point for
me.
Anyway, I talked to mom
and thankfully she said it wasn't necessary for me to take
my site down. Still, I wanted to protect my mother, but
I also didn't feel like being censored. I responded with my
counteroffer to AR: if they would remove my mom's name, I
would not secure the #1 spot in Google for a search on
"aesthetic realism". If there's one thing they fear more
than criticism of their beautiful philosophy, it's highly
visible criticism of their beautiful philosophy.
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Our Google
Rankings
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2005:
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Jan. 2, 2006
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May 5,2005
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Apr. 6
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Jan. 28
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Jan. 1
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aesthetic
realism
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#3
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#5
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#6
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#7
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#14
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aesthetic
realists
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#1
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#3-4
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#1-2
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#1
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unknown
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eli
siegel
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#8
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#11
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#12
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#8
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#29
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aesthetic
realism foundation
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#6
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#7-8
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#9-10
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#9-10
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unknown
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aesthetic
realism cult
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#1-2
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#1-2
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#1-2
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#1
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#1
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Why do we list our Google rankings?
Because the cult leadership monitors our site and
we know that it drives them crazy to see how well
we're publicizing the truth about Aesthetic Realism
-- and because had they not been completely
unwilling to compromise they could have avoided all
this. (See the story at left.)
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They refused, so starting
in January 2005 I started working on my climb up Google.
A boy's gotta avenge his mama, right? And since I was
seeking more prominence in Google and more people would see
the site, I went ahead and added a bunch more content and
gave it a semi-professional design. Truthfully, I enjoyed
having an excuse to devote some time to the site. I'd always
wanted to get the truth out about AR but couldn't really
justify the time it would take to do so. But once they went
after my mom, I had all the motivation I needed. And now,
after I've put the site together, I have some satisfaction
about it. If I keep even one person from being taken in, or
help even one person to leave, or even provide some
background to someone who's heard of AR and is trying to
research it, I'll consider the time I spent worthwhile. That
feeling is reinforced every time I hear from a former member
who tells me how happy they are that I created this site --
and every time AR tries to convince people that I don't know
what I'm talking about by putting some angry insults about
me on their own site.
I'll probably
never make it to #1, but #3 is good enough. It was
certainly good enough to get the AR people to go complaining
to Google about this site ranking so high!
And of course the
greater visibility of this site in the search engines had a
lot to do with why I started hearing from other former
members. They've been eager to share their stories about
the cult aspects of Aesthetic Realism, and stand up to the
charges on Countering the Lies. In fact, I received
the most exhaustive
examination of cult life in AR from a former member
who'd been involved for over a decade and at the highest
levels. This article is so breathtakingly complete and
detailed that it puts to rest any lingering question anyone
might have about whether AR operates as a cult.
It's funny -- had the AR
people simply agreed to restrict their attacks to me instead
of outing my mom as well then my site would have remained a
single throwaway page with no real prominence in the search
engines, and with only a modest amount of evidence to
support my claims that they're a cult. But now we're on
the front page of Google, and we have a mountain of
evidence about AR's misdeeds. It's ironic that they shot
themselves in the foot on this one. Had they simply taken my
mother's name down when I asked then this critique of their
group wouldn't have been so exhaustive and so easy to find.
They have only themselves to blame for that. It turns out
that their own vindictiveness has come back to bite
them.
I don't plan to get in a
shouting match with the Aesthetic Realists about what they
say on their site, with us trading rebuttals across the web,
especially because few people would read them besides
us. Fortunately I don't have to get in such a shouting
match anyway since a
former member has written the final word about the claims on
Countering the Lies, saving me the
trouble. I'll just say for now that when the people involved
with the Aesthetic Realism Foundation say that I'm spreading
"lies", I will somewhat more charitably say that they are
not telling the full story. I do also rebut two of their
charges on this site specifically, proving I wasn't lying
when I said that AR claimed to
have a cure for homosexuality and that AR
hasn't explicitly admitted that their founder killed
himself. And since they called Adam Mali a liar, I have
a page substantiating his claim that AR
members are cut off from communication with their family
members, often for decades. Also, if they're so
confident that I'm a liar, why have they
ignored my numerous offers to debate publicly?
The reader will also note that
I provide tons of original source documents on this
site. You know the old saying, "Give 'em enough
rope...." Here's AR in its own words:
In the end, it's up to
the reader to decide. I'm confident in the arguments and
evidence I've presented.
-- Michael Bluejay, 2005-2009
Which side is telling the
truth?
Here are some things that I think are telling.
- There are lots of
former members who tell pretty much the same kind of
story about life inside the group. Which is more likely:
That all these numerous former members have somehow
formed a secret conspiracy to tell the same kind of story
(for some unfathomable purpose), or that they're really
telling the truth?
- Most people who have joined up with AR have later
left -- and they haven't gone back.
- AR's defenses can be proven false. They said they
never had a cure for homosexuality. The
evidence shows otherwise. They said Eli Siegel didn't
kill himself. The evidence shows
otherwise. They said I was only 2 years old when my
family stopped studying AR. No, I was a teenager, and
here's a picture of me in AR
company wearing my AR button when I was 12.
- It's not just former members saying AR is a cult.
It's also cult experts like Steve
Hassan (author of two critically-acclaimed books on
mind control cults), and the
media. When AR makes it into the media, the treatment
is never favorable.
- Cult members never realize they're part of a cult --
until they leave. Current members are perhaps not the
best unbiased source as to whether a group is a cult or
not. Nor are former members who left only because they
were forced out and not allowed to continue their
study.
- I prefer you get both sides of the story. By all
means, visit AR's Countering
the Lies and read the vitriol they spew about former
members who have dared to speak out. The hysteria
displayed there answers the whole cult question nicely.
My contrast, they won't link to this site, even though
their site is devoted to rebutting this one. It's funny,
people who stumble across their site are supposed to
believe the rebuttals without ever seeing what's
supposedly being rebutted.
- I've had an open offer to debate the AR people for
years. They scream up and down the street that I and the
other former members are "lying", so I say, let's debate
it publicly. But of course they've never accepted. Their
excuse is that I'm not worth their time. But somehow it
was worth their time to create a 100-page website
(!) to argue with me and the other former members behind
the cover of the Internet.
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Aesthetic Realism at a
Glance |
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Name |
The
Aesthetic Realism Foundation |
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Founded |
1941 |
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Founder |
Eli Siegel, poet and art/literary critic.
Committed suicide in 1978 |
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Purpose |
To teach Siegel's philosophy of aesthetic
realism. |
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Philosophy
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The key to all social ills is for people to learn to like the world. Having contempt for the world leads to unhappiness and even insanity. (The slogan of their newsletter is "Contempt causes insanity".) Homosexuality is seen as a form of insanity caused by not liking the world sufficiently.
Also teaches that "beauty is the making one of
opposites". |
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Location |
New York City (SoHo) |
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Membership
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About 103 (35 teachers, 41 training to be teachers, and 27 regular students). Has failed to grow appreciably even after 70 years of
existence, and is currently shrinking.
Members call themselves "students". Advanced
members who teach others are called
"consultants". |
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Method of study |
Public seminars/lectures at their headquarters
(in lower Manhattan), group classes, and
individual consultations (three consultants
vs. one student). |
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Cult aspects
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- Fanatical devotion to their
leader/founder
- Belief that they have the one true answer to
universal happiness
- Ultimate purpose is to recruit new
members
- Feeling that they are being persecuted
- Wild, paranoid reactions to criticism
- Non-communication (or at least very limited communication) with those who have left
the group
- Odd, specialized language.
More about cult aspects...
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Open offer to debate
How do you decide which side is telling the truth? I think that would be the side willing to stand behind what he says. Since 2005 I've had an open offer to debate the Aesthetic Realists publicly in a formal format at any time to defend what I've said on this site, and to answer their own charges against me. But the AR people won't do it. Their excuse is, "He's not worth debating." But if that's true, then why did they put up a ninety-six page website to try to snipe at me and to try to rebut what I'm saying? I think the answer is that they're content to hide behind the cover of the Internet, but they know how bad they'd look in a live format where anyone actually got to ask any pointed questions.
You know what's really funny? Someone went to one of their public presentations, said he'd seen this site, and asked about the cult allegations. The AR person said, "It's very easy to say crap like that on the Internet and never have to be challenged." Oh, the irony is killing me!
Anyway, Aesthetic Realists, as for a public debate, I'm ready when you are. And to everyone else, when the AR people won't stand behind what they're saying, why should anyone take what they say seriously?
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