Success & Buffalo Bill

EVERYONE WANTS SUCCESS—BUT WHAT ON EARTH IS IT?
Harvey Spears
(This paper was presented as part of a seminar at The Aesthetic Realism Foundation, NYC)


I want men everywhere to know what I’ve learned on the subject of success. Like men today, I once felt it meant having a prestigious job with an expense account, where people took notice when you went down the halls. In college, during an orientation program, though I had cared for art and studied it, I remember scoffing at how the head of the Fine Arts Department dressed not in keeping with my notion of real style, and I discounted everything he said. But when the head of the department of advertising spoke, I thought he really looked the part of the successful ad man.

And once, when the owner of an ad agency I worked for denigrated the work of another art director, and said to me, "You look like the kind of guy to get the job done; I'm counting on you!"--I didn't say a word in my fellow-worker's defense, and was completely oblivious to the owner's real motive--flattering me to extract more work. I had a rush of gratified vanity, but I also felt ashamed and avoided my colleague. I later learned from Aesthetic Realism why I felt so low: that my wanting to beat out other people and show I was superior to them, came from the most hurtful thing in every self: the desire for contempt. The only thing wrong with what is called “getting ahead” is the contempt that accompanies it. I learned that we come from the world, and if we lessen anything in it, we also lessen our very selves. This was why, even as I eventually did have what I saw as a successful career, I didn't like myself and was often surly with people. Sitting in my office, I could go from feeling "on top of the world" to despair in a way that made no sense to me. Studying Aesthetic Realism changed the direction of my entire life.


I. THE FIGHT BETWEEN A TRUE AND FALSE NOTION SUCCESS

In high school, I couldn't wait for algebra classes, and I felt great when, after hours of giving myself to solving algebraic problems, I arrived at the solution!

But I had another notion of success: to shine at other people's expense. Growing up in Queens, I felt I was the most important person in the family. When my mother Shirley Spears came home from work and said, "Hi Harvey" she had a different tone than with either my father or my younger brother, Larry. He loved to paint, but she hardly spoke about his drawings; it was me she bragged about.

By the time I was a teenager, I felt things should just come to me, and found it difficult to give my mind to anything that didn't make me feel immediately important. I often went from being affable, showing care for something, to being a wise guy with a sneer, wanting to dismiss what earlier had meant so much to me. When I saw the movie Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, I felt terrified, saying to myself, "That's not me!" But I worried that it was. If I liked a girl and she seemed to like me, I'd wind up doing or saying something that would mess it up. By age 21, I was afraid I would never get anywhere or be able to care for anyone.

In an Aesthetic Realism lesson I had with Eli Siegel, he enabled me to understand the two directions in myself and in every person—the desire to assert myself masterfully and the desire to yield humbly. In one lesson he asked: "Let's [take] your hand——do you think it always has the possibility of being limp?"

HS: Yes it does.

ES: Do you think it can also stretch out and clench?

HS: Right.

ES: So, in other words, if the self can have an attitude like this, "the hell with you!" and also have an attitude like this--imploring; ...then the self can have two deeply different attitudes and be one self.....Aesthetic Realism says there are two attitudes which come to this: "Go to hell World!" and "Without you, World, I'm nothing!"

As I saw I had those two attitudes, I began to learn what really represents me. Mr. Siegel explained: “The purpose of life is to be interested in everything that is worthy of one's interest, and in a way that is aesthetic, or shapely, or accurate.” I began to be interested in many things I once saw as so far away from me, including classical literature and history. And I came to have real feeling about justice coming to people, including economically, and something I once felt could never be: honest love in my life.


II. I LEARN WHAT REAL SUCCESS IN LOVE IS

As I was growing up, I came to feel—beginning with my mother--that a woman's purpose in life should be to make me happy, to anticipate my every need and not make too many demands.

In college, when I met Andrea Kramer, the fact that she wanted to be of use to people and was studying to be a nurse was of little consequence. I judged her on her adoration of me. Once, I remember being annoyed visiting her sister and husband who had to struggle financially. I coldly said to Andrea, "We can't always socialize with your sister; we have to mix with people who are better off." She looked troubled, but then she smiled and said, "You're right," and I felt triumphant that she preferred me over everyone.

Meanwhile, I would get very moody, and at times be insufferably irritable. Often, a woman had to ask me, "What's the matter?" and I would say, "Nothing, I just want to be alone." Increasingly, I felt like a dismal failure as to love. Mr. Siegel once described my relations with a woman as consisting of two things; wanting to capture her, and then telling her off. He described what I felt so truly when he said: "Harvey Spears is tortured by how he sees women." My gratitude to him for understanding and criticizing my masculine conceit very large. In one class, he asked me in relation to a woman I was seeing and having trouble with:

ES: Do you believe, you have been giving way to anything not perfect in yourself?

I said "Yes," and he explained:

ES. Do you know how to take a woman's approval with accuracy? so far you haven't known how and it has made for sorrow...There is a tendency [in men to feel] if a woman continues to smile, everything is settled. A woman's care for you should go to your intelligence, not to your head. It should make you more graceful and accurate and kinder. Usually [getting a woman’s care] means a man thinks everything he does should be approved of.

And in another class, speaking to me and my mother, Shirley Spears, Mr. Siegel asked her if she felt she had been loved adequately, and when she replied "No," he asked: "Do you think you and your son make the same mistake?" And he explained:

At a certain time one looks for rewards. When that occurs, Cupid is short-circuited. People don't want to understand each other thoroughly, but they want to be loved thoroughly. What we want to do is get comfort and happiness from a person first, not understand thoroughly. If you really love someone, your desire to understand has no limits.

My mother was grateful hearing this, as I was. Because I’ve been learning to have this purpose—to understand deeply--with my wife Carol Driscoll, whom I love very much, I feel I’m able to have a good effect on a woman—and this is success in love!


III. A MAN OF THE WEST SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT SUCCESS IS

I speak now about a person who dramatically represents the two notions of success every man needs to be clear about. He is one of the best known Americans, whose life was synonymous with the "Wild West," and whose name was on the lips of nearly every boy--William Frederick Cody, known as "Buffalo Bill." In my sixth grade graduation album, in the space to fill in my hero, went the name of Buffalo Bill. I loved to hear about his rousing adventures; at the same time, I felt he looked kind. This is a photograph taken at the height of his fame.

His greatest success was in bringing the Western frontier to people--in what came to be known as "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show," which traveled throughout America and Europe. He had people see with their own eyes the mystery and excitement of the American West. Many, for the first time, saw Native Americans, including the Sioux Chief Sitting Bull. They saw bison, bucking horses, speeding stagecoaches; Mexican Vaqueros whose riding and roping skills astonished people. Women were seen differently, including Annie Oakley, an expert marksman. Millions of people saw in these shows what they could only once imagine, and they were immensely successful.

William Cody also had a desire to be generous. On an 1886 tour, he advertised that he would give a free ticket to every newsboy and bootblack who came to the Staten Island opening of his show. 1500 boys showed up, and each was given a paper sack containing lunch. "The boys," writes Stella Foote, "thrilled at [his] exploits, gazed with wonder and admiration at his kindly face;...and went forth to boast of the fact that they had seen Buffalo Bill."

This I believe it stands for true success in his life--wanting to have a good effect on people. He also had another notion, writing: "Immense success...in the profession of showman...increased my ambition for public favor," and this "ambition for public favor"--became the driving force in his life. He had to have the acclaim of people and that often meant using them selfishly to advance his own popularity. Yet he also wrote: "I grow very tired of this sham worship." and at the height of his fame, he often drank to excess.

I think William Cody would have felt understood by what Mr. Siegel writes in the comment to his definition of success:

A man has power over thousands of people. His self then has some kind of largeness, diversity. People seem to approve of him, and this serves as evidence for self-approval....If such a man feels deeply and outwardly that he has done as he wants, that he has seen his purpose, and the purpose has come to be--he has success....Yet if this famous person cannot say, "Through this, my self in its wholeness has got what it wants, is successful"--then, that much he does not have success."

IV. A FIGHT BETWEEN TWO NOTIONS OF SUCCESS BEGAN EARLY

William Frederick Cody was born in Le Clair, Iowa on Feb. 26, 1846 to Mary Ann and Isaac Cody. At age 9, he accompanied his father to Kansas and was struck with awe meeting Kit Carson and for the first time, Kickapoo Indians, who, he wrote: "would carry on long and interesting conversations [in sign language]....I was naturally desirous of mastering this mysterious medium of speech, and began my education in it." He was interested in everything; the covered wagons called prairie schooners, the cattle round-ups, the wild beauty of the land, and the men at the trading post who "had huge pistols, and...large broad-rimmed hats" Later, he would incorporate his vivid impressions into his wild west show.

At 11, after the death of his father, Will left school and went to work, including as a Pony Express rider, to help support his mother and four sisters. This took courage and he got a good deal of praise from his family. At the same time, I believe he exploited this praise, especially that of his sisters who openly adored him. One sister, Helen, wrote a biography which not only praises her brother extravagantly, but even makes up things that weren't true. I believe he used their lavish approval to feel everyone should see him this way, and it hurt his whole life.

In 1868, Cody, then age 22, was hired to supply buffalo meat for the men building the Kansas Railroad, and thus he began the work that would give him the name, Buffalo Bill. At this time, writes biographer John Burke, millions of buffalo supplied everything Indians needed: food, clothing, blankets, tepee coverings. But in one decade, 1865 to 1875, the American buffalo, often hunted for sport, were all but wiped out, their carcasses left to rot on the plains. This, I learned, was part of a contemptuously cruel, covert campaign on the part of the US government, which by annihilating the very thing Native Americans needed to survive, forced them on to reservations, leaving vast, fertile lands for the use of white settlers. John Burke--quoting General Sheridan--writes: "White hunters...had done more in a few years to 'settle the Indian question' than the...Army in 30 years on the frontier."

Shamefully, William Cody was part of this. He liked the praise he got for his hunting skills, and led shooting parties of wealthy people, "The Millionaires Hunting Party," he called them.

The first purpose of self, [Mr. Siegel writes] should be to have a purpose adequate to it. If a person doesn't have this, he from the start is that much welcoming what isn't success. He can be said to have reached China in a blaze of glory when he intended to get to Australia; he can be said to have shot a bird, when his purpose was to hear a bird sing.

Men have to see that going after approval at another's expense hurts our lives because it goes against our true desire-- to be a real success through seeing meaning in other people, and other living beings——having large feeling about them.

In later years, Buffalo Bill regretted his participation in these hunts, and at a time when the buffalo were nearly extinct, he used his fame to fight for their preservation.

In 1865, while serving in the Union Army, William Cody met Louisa Frederici of St. Louis. In her biography, she wrote, "he was the most handsome man I had ever seen," and somewhat like Desdemona listening to Othello in Shakespeare’s play, she was spellbound by the stories he told her, the dangers he had overcome. In 1866, they were married, and moved West to begin a new life.

What makes for real success in love, Aesthetic Realism taught me, is for two people to use knowing each other to like the world. But a man can also let the approval of a woman as Mr. Siegel cautioned me, "go to [his] head and not [his] intelligence." Buffalo Bill, who was accustomed to the adoration of his sisters, expected this same unquestioning approval from his wife, and when this didn't happen, there was resentment. Though they remained married, and had children, there was much pain. Louisa was jealous, and he was suspicious of her--complaining bitterly in letters to his sister. Instead of wanting to criticize himself when there was trouble, he wanted to say they weren't meant for each other.

I’ve learned that unless a man hopes to respect people, and wants to know what it means for another person to be stronger, we can never feel we are a success no matter how much praise we get. From the time he first saw Indians in Kansas, at age 9, William Cody was very much affected, and saw them as honorable. He said in an interview:

[W]hen there is trouble between white men and Indians, it will [usually] be found that the white man is responsible. Indians expect a man to keep his word....Most of them would as soon cut off a leg as lie.

This shows deep respect, and feeling. At the same time, the way he saw Native Americans was double. Some of the Indians who took part in his wild west shows were noted Chiefs, respected greatly by their tribes. Having been robbed of their lands and livelihoods, they were forced to put themselves on display to feed their hungry people. One heartbreaking description of Indians signing up for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show is the following:

The Indians, five or six hundred of them...came in their finest buckskins, feathers and beads. Only a small part of that number could be used, and the ones not chosen felt pretty bad.

Though he is credited with treating these men well, I don't think Cody asked himself, "How should this man who once was a great chief be seen?" Instead, he felt what a factory owner in Queens can feel about his workers; he owns them, and they should make money for him. "Remember my Indians come first," he said. "They are the main attraction of my show." If he were asked: “Do you have enough feeling for what these Native Americans have gone through?” I’m quite sure he would have said “No.” And if he were asked: “Do you want to do everything you can to remedy America's injustice to them?" I believe at this time he would answer, "Yes."

In letter I wrote about the devastating effect of our unjust economy on the Lakota Sioux, which was published in two Native American papers in Bemidji, Minnesota, and Rosebud, South Dakota. I quoted a question Eli Siegel asked which I feel Buffalo Bill Cody would be grateful for: "What does a person deserve by being a person?" The being able to ask and answer that question, I see as success in life, and I want men everywhere to know this.