What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Superheroes and sentimentality

My Watchmen post below generated some interesting combox feedback, much of which I agree with. Thinking about the subject further, it occurs to me that there might be yet another factor at work in the phenomenon I described.

In The Aesthetics of Music, Roger Scruton (building on some ideas of Michael Tanner) puts forward a brief but illuminating account of sentimentality. A sentimental person, according to Scruton, tends to be quick to respond emotionally to a stimulus, will appear to be pained but will enjoy his pangs, will respond with equal violence to a variety of stimuli in succession, will nevertheless avoid following his emotional responses up with appropriate actions, and will respond more readily to strangers and to abstract issues than to persons known to him or to concrete circumstances requiring time, energy, or personal sacrifice. In short, a sentimental person is one whose emotional life becomes an end in itself and loses its connection both to the external circumstances that would normally shape it and to the behavior that it ought to generate. Feelings of moral outrage, romantic passion, and other emotional states become valued for their own sake to such an extent that the actual moral facts, the well-being of the beloved, etc. fade into the background. Sentimentality thus involves having one’s emotions “on the cheap” – enjoying them, as it were, without paying the costs they entail. For that reason, Scruton says, it is a vice.

I would suggest that the following behavior patterns are pretty clear signs of sentimentality in this sense:

“Doing something” about “world hunger” by making (or buying) records like “We are the world,” watching Live Aid, etc., while knowing or caring little about what actually causes food shortages or what actually happens to emergency food supplies sent to Third World countries.

Badmouthing capitalism while collecting gigantic paychecks (actors, pop stars, etc.) or otherwise living comfortably off of the capitalist system (professors, students, etc.)

Thinking that the following sorts of behavior evince great virtue: voting a certain way; going to a political rally; signing a petition; sorting one’s garbage into different bins; driving a Prius; sticking an anti-Bush sticker on the bumper of one’s car; etc.

Thinking the following sorts of behavior are not particularly virtuous: refraining from sex until you are married; staying married for better or worse, richer or poorer; not aborting a baby despite the fact that it was unplanned, will be an inconvenience, is disabled; etc.

Expressing outrage over the plight of the people of this or that war-torn country when doing so might cause political damage to some conservative politician, but ignoring them otherwise; denouncing proposals actually to do something about their plight (e.g. economic sanctions, military action), while offering no concrete alternatives.

Believing it takes real courage to “stand up” to an evangelical Christian who publishes a book or gives a speech, while refusing to say anything that might offend a jihadist who slits a throat or blows up a pizzeria.

Weeping over the cramped conditions inside chicken coops and dog kennels while heartily approving of those who kill and dismember fetuses.

Etc.

Suppose there were people prone to this sort of vicious sentimentality – purely hypothetical I know, but let’s just pretend. Is it possible they might also be prone to the following sort of cognitive dissonance?

Thinking movies like Watchmen present us with deep moral quandaries and characters whose motives and actions, however horrific, we must seek to “understand” rather than either “condone” or “condemn.”

while, at the same time

Thinking that the decisions made by the Bush administration in the face of the threat of future 9/11-style attacks, the persistent flouting by the likes of Saddam Hussein of a series of UN resolutions, etc., represented no moral difficulties at all but only evil, evil, evil.

To ask the question is, I think, to answer it.

Comments (44)

You missed: planning or participating in: a walk, march, or other activity over a few hours, to raise awareness of the plight of the lesser barn owl, or the snail darter, or the poor in Somalikistan.

As if "raising awareness" is something that actually helps improve the condition the sentimentalist is "concerned" about.

Literary critic/philosopher Marion Montgomery has an excellent discussion of this issue in his book "Why Flannery O'Connor Stayed Home," which I'm currently reading for the second time (I highly recommend it, if you can find a copy.) The springboard of his discussion is Miss O'Connor's well-known statement that tenderness separated from the source of tenderness, Christ, leads to gulags and gas chambers. Montgomery would agree with Scruton, and says that modern sentimentality is the flip side of modern brutality.

I don't have the book at hand, but I'll try to post some pertinent quotes later today.

It would be very interesting to consider the following question: What is the difference between sentimentalism in this vicious sense, particularly in the enjoyment or appreciation of art, and catharsis in the Aristotelian sense? The Aristotelian view of tragedy is that it allows us to purge feelings of fear and pity by participating vicariously in what is going on on stage while not actually being threatened oneself. It seems that catharsis in that sense has a healthy role in an individual life and in society. But it also seems that there is something out of whack in our own society such that people prefer virtual reality and vicarious experience over real life and real experience. (See, for example, all the virtual worlds stuff people do on-line.) Is this a difference of degree from the healthy use of catharsis or actually a difference of kind?

Btw, I want to heartily second Rob G's reference to O'Connor on misguided tenderness. There is nothing more pitiless and evil than sentiment not tied down to a real moral compass. I think here, in literature, right off of two things: The end of _Canticle for Leibowitz_ with the euthanasia camps and the line, "Ich hatte kein mitleid" in the novel _The Girl in the Swing_. (Since many readers may not have read the latter, I won't go into details to avoid a plot spoiler.)

I always took 'raising awareness' to be motivated by Americans' woeful ignorance of everything outside the US, save what's on the nightly news. That is, primarily focused on education rather than actively doing something about it.

We have reached a stage in our civilization where unexamined and untutored indignation is a value in itself, a source of self satisfaction, and an identifying mark that sets the indignant above those incapable and cloddish commoners who cow like tend to their own lives.

The problem with this is that morality has diverged from the individual in his own circle to a public sphere centered on government, media, and ostentatious display by people who react to presentations of"problems" and "crisis" by the new governors of morality. Themselves I say, a sorry lot.

So for example to resist being herded into a health care plan you don't want is to be a member of a mob, to lose the very individuality referenced above, and to be denied respect and covered with a blanket opprobrium.

And we approach a morality of non-action and hyper-emotion, simple and satisfying.

One simple shorthand for discerning (at least one major kind of) sentimentality is by reference to the Sheryl Crow song that blares "If it MAKES you happyyyyyyyyy, it can't that baaaaaaaad..."

In order words, sentimentality seems to be emotions or emotional appeals that are not grounded in the reality of an objective moral order in creation. It divorces delight and beauty from the true and good.

Another pop culture shorthand for sentimentality is Love, Actually which ought to be titled Sentimentality, Actually. There really are great examples of love in the film, but their juxtaposition with examples of disordered "love" betray a moral confusion which claims there is no difference between porn stars falling in love while they make their movies and a wife struggling to persevere in marriage. So in the end, it's mere sentimentality rather than love that is celebrated there.

If emotions ought not be rooted in the moral order because, for example, there is no such order, but instead are self-justifying, then it makes sense that some would claim the actions of the Watchmen are merely to be understood, and not understood and condoned or condemned.

I like the way Scruton puts it ("having emotions on the cheap") because he names the pretensions of sentimentality to being real, deeply real, to who we are and what matters most ("tolerance," "understanding," "happiness," etc.) while seeking to avoid/escape/alter the reality of moral order inherent in creation that brings the wages of sin and suffering to those who would have it their own way.

Ed,
Excellent job of skewering those Dickensian charachters that blight our social life, but let’s add these arch-types of blustering sentimentality to the list;

The strutting apostle of libertarianism, ardent defender of free markets and scourge of free-loaders who suddenly discovers the virtue of government regulations only after he has been personally victimized by an entity operating in a deregulated market and then, incessantly whines about a State too slow in providing justice.

The self-proclaimed patriot whose support for wars never requires much sacrifice on the part of him or his family, beyond his growing dewey-eyed during recitations of the July 4TH rhetoric that are the staple of his warrior’s diet.

That paragon of piety and family values whose frequent business trips, 60,000 dollars of metal in his drive-way, and well accessorized life are testaments to his dual loyalty to both the Good News and the good life.

My take on the paragraph beginning "In The Aesthetics of Music..." was very different, essentially personal and entirely apolitical. It seems an insight into the daily internal lives of some fellow citizens. I enjoy Scruton's thoughtful writing and the way he bids us look in the mirror. I have not read this whole work of his but In this case I don't see why it could not be the case that emotional dedication, as it were, goes hand-in-hand with repentance. In other words, cases where sentimentality is *not* "valued for its own sake" but is rather an established and genuinely tormenting debilitation. Thus, "will appear to be pained but will enjoy his pangs" becomes just plain pained.

One of the tendencies of our age is to use the suffering of children to discredit the goodness of God, and once you have discredited His goodness, you are done with Him.... Ivan Karamazov cannot believe, as long as one child is in torment; Camus' hero cannot accept the divinity of Christ, because of the massacre of the innocents. In this popular piety, we mark our gain in sensibility and our loss in vision. If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long since cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.
Flannery O'Connor

Many Christians have wrapped Christ in theory, but few will become active practicioners of barbarism, as much as passive spectators to it, and comfortable conformists incapable of generating a mode of lving that could be called Christian in any real sense of the word.

Sentimentality thrives where faith recedes.

Would you mind posting about two forthcoming Masses in Ireland for the Holy Year of Priests?

http://catholicheritage.blogspot.com/2009/08/forthcoming-masses-september-october.html

And if you could link to our blog/put us on your blogroll too that would be fantastic.

God bless you!

St. Conleth's CHA

Completely unrelated, but I just received a copy of The Last Superstition in the mail. I will start reading as soon as I can.

I always took 'raising awareness' to be motivated by Americans' woeful ignorance of everything outside the US, save what's on the nightly news.

Matt, well yes, in concept "raising awareness" should be considered under the light of educating the ignorant. Good thing to do. But (1) how does my walking X miles instead of X-2 educate anyone at all? Or rather, how does my committing to walking further the purpose of actually saying anything worthwhile about the problem? (2) These people don't talk about the walking and "raising awareness" as some preliminary to accomplishing a change in the problem, they talk about it as if the walk accomplished the change. And they feel good about the walk as if they had fulfilled a serious commitment about doing something worthwhile about the problem.

That paragon of piety and family values whose frequent business trips, 60,000 dollars of metal in his drive-way, and well accessorized life are testaments to his dual loyalty to both the Good News and the good life.

Kevin, I might be willing to go along with your thoughts for the first 2, but I think this third does not much illustrate anything, for this discussion anyway. What in the world has "frequent business trips" got to do with living, or not living, a life in accordance with the Good News. Are you saying that good people should not have frequent business trips? Never having come close to owning a 30,000 car, I am a long way from thinking that a 60,000 car is part of a "normal" level of household amenities, but there may be circumstances where it not contrary to humble Christian stewardship: for someone who is disabled, a car that is street-modified for his disabilities, for example.

Lydia, your question is very apt. I discussed this in relation to music last week with my daughter. I think that one possible answer is that of moderation: The extent to which you "use" the play to achieve catharsis, in comparison with the degree to which you simply live real life, should have a kind of balance. A life that contains 3 hours of TV catharsis a day seems pretty clearly out of balance.

If this is true, a more difficult question is whether there are some forms of literary/artificial engagement of feelings that is more appropriate because it tends toward being used in a limited way, and other forms that are more dangerous (or even simply disordered) because they tend away from being limited in use. My daughter was, I think, contending that the sentimentality evoked by the music of the romantics is disordered because it seems to have no natural end, and in practice has no tendency to be imbibed with limits.

What in the world has "frequent business trips" got to do with living, or not living, a life in accordance with the Good News.

Tony,
My point is about the trade-off posed by the attainment of success and acquisition of material goods, and our vocations as Christian husbands and fathers. We prefer not to see any conflict, especially if it means foregoing a new car or job promotion. The full effects of Careerism or consumerism aren't felt until later, but all those missed games, recitals and family events do take a toll, and no amount of new cars, fine furniture or great vacations can lessen the impact. Touting the virtues of chastity, monogamy and ascetism require more than well-honed rhetoric, otherwise, it is mere sentimentality parading as faith.

My point is about the trade-off posed by the attainment of success and acquisition of material goods, and our vocations as Christian husbands and fathers. We prefer not to see any conflict, especially if it means foregoing a new car or job promotion.

Sure, but what if this businessman's kids are all grown now? In any case, those trade-offs are inherently matters of prudence. Most businessmen who also have young children should limit their time away from home, sure. But that "most" is important. In some cases, God calls you to a career that requires frequent trips, and then you submit to His will and do what you can to limit the other problems, relying on his grace for what you cannot provide. Examples: a statesman needs to be about the business of the state, and that tends to require being away a lot more than the average family man. A sailor (whether in the Navy, or in the merchant-marine) has a job that takes him away from family for significant stretches. Unless you are prepared to state that these occupations are prohibited to the Christian father, you have to agree that only for MOST families is it true that "frequent business trips" is not consistent with rearing a family.

Or, to put it another way, simply being a breadwinner is a trade-off with spending full time rearing your kids. So naturally, there is a point at which the trade-off is appropriate, and there is some other point at which it is not. Pointing out that some people fail to draw the line in a reasonable place does not really substantiate that they are sentimentalists about the Gospel.

Is your point equivalent to saying that whenever we talk the Gospel but don't live it, we are being the sort of sentimentalist that Dr. Feser has noted here? That would cover a pretty large subset of humanity, all Christians but 2.

One of my areas of academic expertise is in music history and performance, particularly in medieval and twentieth-century areas (first one to figure out what these two eras have in common wins a prize). As such, I have had to grapple with this phenomenon as it manifests itself in twentieth-century music. It was precisely a reaction to this phenomenon which spawned the neo-romantic movement in the early 1970s.

In the early twentieth-century (building, no doubt on an Enlightenment foundation), music went from being extremely programmatic, a la Wagner, to a complex nightmare of mathematics, a la Schoenberg, Berg, or later, Xenakis or Stockhausen. Music became unanchored to human experience and as such, it was the mere experience itself that was sought, since the composers of these kinds of "mathmusics" did not understand neuroprocessing enough (another areas I work in) to realize that just any old mathematics does not make music - human music. I can create a program in a computer to create something that I will henceforth call "humor," but unless it is connected to humanity, no one else will laugh.

When reason and feeling become completely separated, as happened in the 1920's in German experimental music, the theory becomes all or the experience becomes all, but they do not inform each other. It is like the aesthetic process has suffered a split brain operation. To be more precise, the mind, which has the habit of extracting emotional information from traditional music, when presented with entirely unemotional music, tends to free float and generates the equivalent of REM type processing, where unanchored emotions are internally generated based upon the slightest of external stimuli.

This same process, in the literary field (although to a much less extent and backwards, as emotions, not reason was sought) led to a type of sentimentalism, but 180 degrees out of phase with the musical process of de-emotionalisation. In the literary field, a flood of emotionalism without any anchor to reason will produce, essentially, the same effect: a type of internalized reasoning where any reason can be derived form the slightest emotional experience - welcome to postmodernism.

In both arts, it is the divorcing of emotion and reason, the unanchoring of one within the other, that leads to these types of extreme compensatory behavior - extreme subjective emotionalism in music and extreme subjective rationalism in literature. The smoking gun in diagnosing these splits is the sudden overwhelming interest in the single theory behind the single piece of art without any attempt to unite the single piece to other pieces so as to form something common and relatable to man.

In a word, both forms of these disorders lead to inhuman art and I mean that literally. It becomes impossible to tell if a man or a machine produced the art. It is the ultimate reverse Turing test: if you can't tell if a man or machine made the art, that doesn't necessarily mean that the machine has been elevated to the status of a man - it can also mean that man has been reduced in status to the machine.

The Watchmen series suffers from this disorder. Moore claims to be making a comic story exploring what would realistically happen if men really had superpowers, while, ironically, creating characters who are something other than human. I see nothing but sheer startle in the concept, not something edifying- in much the way that atonality is at first startling, then annoying.

It is precisely because a genuine, informed consideration of humanity is left out of the process of creation of the Watchmen series that sentimentality is the only response - a free-floating internalized emotional response of our own creation, disconnected from that which is common to man. Of course, a genuine, informed consideration of humanity can only, truly, be found in Christianity, and Moore (and the other comics of the time) would have nothing of that. This was the end of the "bronze" age of comics, when the occult reigned supreme within the pages and the beginning of what is known among comic fans as, "The Dark Ages," - an age not only of a loss of reason, but an age where darkness reigned. This running away from the common of humanity, as exemplified in Christ, was what led to the sad Watchmen series. It is telling that so many comic fans find the series as innovative. The series is about as innovative as sin, but then again, many comic fans, nowadays, can no longer tell the difference between brilliance and deviancy.

Sorry to rattle on so long. I have been thinking about these issues for a very long time.

The Chicken

So naturally, there is a point at which the trade-off is appropriate, and there is some other point at which it is not. Pointing out that some people fail to draw the line in a reasonable place does not really substantiate that they are sentimentalists about the Gospel

When the lives of Christians are indistinquishable from those of the rest of society and, the "yes, you can have it all" ethos is more lived out than a vocation of self-denial and sacrifice, then yes, Christians have reduced the Gospels to a Hallmark collection of warm and fuzzy sentiments made superficially distinct by an ornamental Cross. Sorry, but sins of the flesh aren't restricted to just those of sexuality, and so the outwardly pious family values guy consumed by the logic of commerce and the pursuit of all its accoutrements is as worthy of Ed's list as anyone else. Maybe even more so.

Kevin made the profound statement:

When the lives of Christians are indistinquishable from those of the rest of society and, the "yes, you can have it all" ethos is more lived out than a vocation of self-denial and sacrifice, then yes, Christians have reduced the Gospels to a Hallmark collection of warm and fuzzy sentiments made superficially distinct by an ornamental Cross. Sorry, but sins of the flesh aren't restricted to just those of sexuality, and so the outwardly pious family values guy consumed by the logic of commerce and the pursuit of all its accoutrements is as worthy of Ed's list as anyone else. Maybe even more so.


Very well put!

Remarkable that the state of Christian society merely mirrors that of secular society in general.

There is no such notion of De Civitate Dei in today's brand of Christianity; it's all about De Civitate Mundi and just how many more mansions and private jets supposed ministers of purportedly Christian churches can purchase off the tithes of their modest-incomed congregations!

Got Mammon?

Dividing people into categories of this and not this is entertaining, and partially illuminating at times when the real crux of the matter is our frustration with a world of souls captured by falsehood or immaturity in varying degrees. Thus, we cannot find much communion with each other which pains us all.

I was struck by this when a young man, my daughter’s current beau, was telling us about his time in Athens (where my wife I had once been twenty-five years earlier).

After telling us about the heat, the length of time it took to get to and up the Acropolis, and many other ancillary details, I asked him what he thought of the Parthenon?

“It had some scaffolding on it which detracted from seeing it, and it was neat to see how thick the columns really were and stuff.”

The Parthenon will probably have scaffolding on some parts of it until the Second Coming. It did when I was there.

He also admitted that the view of the Acropolis lit up at night was very pleasing.

My experience of the Parthenon was one of awed appreciation. I had long studied it and wished to see it in person. It exceeded my vision. There truly are no straight lines on the building. The proportions, simplicity, and beauty struck me as having a truthfulness which was divine. It was pure music of such subtlety and grace, such peace and intelligence; well, I stood in simple awe and delight.

I would no more tire of seeing it than I ever tired of seeing Mt. Shasta when I lived there.

The Parthenon is one of if not the most beautiful building in the world and acclaimed so for good reason. A good example in contrast is the better preserved Temple of Hephaestus. A classic Doric temple, too, and yet does not please as the Parthenon does. The copy in Nashville is also very satisfying and delightful to the eye except for the fact that it isn’t marble, but the proportions, balance, weight, lightness, and grace are all there. And it gives the sense of how the original building looked like minus the ruin.

Millions of people see the Parthenon is person every year, but for how many is it a divine experience of Beauty? Whereas the interior baroque of St. Peter’s is guaranteed to impress itself on the multitudes.

St. Peter’s is impressive but I think I prefer the Parthenon as I might prefer Bach to Beethoven in everyday living. (I might also prefer the Pantheon to St. Peter’s but I have seen neither in person so can’t definitively say.)

So, is St. Peter’s more sentimental than the Parthenon since it has a greater appeal, makes a bigger impression, overwhelms with detail, flourish, ornament, color, textures, figures, patterns, and so forth?

It also allows the tourist or gazer to walk away amazed and temporarily elevated in mod, but is he enlightened in any transforming manner? Is the viewer of the Parthenon transformed? Was I? Aesthetically, it changed me, or confirmed me. But Bach doesn't alter me, either. He just makes me feel like I am touching Beauty more directly, momentarily, or immersing me in the river of being and truth. Or is that sentimental, too?

Dividing people into categories of this and not this is entertaining...

Yeah, imagine the hilarious riot as I read Augustine discussing the two cities, the City of God and the city of man; the camp of the former being for God while the latter being opposed to Him.

Then again, Augustine might have merely been a pagan-influenced early century ersatz Christian who probably didn't know any better and was just as clueless as your daughter's beau.

There is no such notion of De Civitate Dei in today's brand of Christianity; it's all about De Civitate Mundi and just how many more mansions and private jets supposed ministers of purportedly Christian churches can purchase off the tithes of their modest-incomed congregations!

Yes, absolutely. (Except for the ones who aren't like that. But you weren't referring to those, right?)

Sorry, but sins of the flesh aren't restricted to just those of sexuality, and so the outwardly pious family values guy consumed by the logic of commerce and the pursuit of all its accoutrements is as worthy of Ed's list as anyone else. Maybe even more so.

So, is Ed's list of sentimentalism co-extensive with any and all sorts of hypocrisy that pertains to a person who calls himself a Christian but fails to live Christianity fully?

So, is Ed's list of sentimentalism co-extensive with any and all sorts of hypocrisy that pertains to a person who calls himself a Christian but fails to live Christianity fully?

Does a mawkish "faith" of extrinsic symbols, rituals anmd empty sentiments even rise to the level of hypocrisy? It should it only be lampooned, if mockery serves to lance the self-deceptive bourgeois spirit from the Body of Christ.

Marion Montgomery, following Richard Weaver, calls sentimentalism "an unintelligent substitute for an old piety toward creation which we have long since abandoned." He goes on to quote the Catholic literary critic William Lynch, who tells the story of a parochial school science class who are stopped by a court order from launching a mouse in a rocket: "It is the reign, this protest for the mouse, of absolute sentimentality. It is that kind of identification of the solemn levels of human feeling with anything and everything which produces tawdriness and stupidity."

Flannery O'Connor, according to Montgomery, puts this sentimentality down to a failure of discrimination based on the modern separation of grace and nature, and the outright rejection of the former. This failure of discrimination not only causes us to apply solemn levels of human feeling to things that do not deserve it, it also results in a failure to recognize the obscene, both violent and sexual.

The image I have here is of the woman who faithfully watches Jerry Springer or Ultimate Fighting Championship on a giant screen TV in a living room hung with Thomas Kinkade paintings.

**Sentimentality thus involves having one’s emotions “on the cheap” – enjoying them, as it were, without paying the costs they entail. For that reason, Scruton says, it is a vice.**

What Miss O'Connor says about modern readers may apply to our culture across the board, as things have gotten considerably worse in the ensuing 40+ years since she wrote this: "There is something in us as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether and so he has forgotten the price of restoration...He wants to be transported, instantly, either to a mock damnation or a mock innocence."

Writer Mark Edmundson in his book "Nightmare on Main Street" calls this tendency a quest for 'facile transcendence.'

Okay. I get we dislike sentimentalism in art, literature, and religion. What I'm not getting is a sense of the obverse. Sentimentalism as opposed to what? Profundity? The Beautiful and True?

Fine. But how often does an encounter with the profound in music, art, literature, or religion make a bit of difference to your actions.

A couple of snide fellows here are going on about bourgeois Christians not being saintly enough, but how is it that a number of saints then were afficionados of religious kitsch and were moved to tears by the silliest depictions of Christ or Hallmark card scenes a la Thomas Kincaid et al? Does their kitsch disqualify their religious sentimentality and acts?

What actually changes people? In my experience, prayer changes people, but one doesn't have to pray to alter one's behavior. And prayer may start out of sentimentality but it won't end there if it's followed as a discipline.

But then simply acting saintly will make one a saint whether one prays or not, won't it?

But if prayer is the main thing as Christ and Paul say we must pray constantly, I'd be surprised to learn how many here are putting in even an hour or two of it every day.

So....

I suppose I am out of my league here. To begin with, I have not watched the Watchmen movie. I would prefer, that if I absolutely must see it, that it be from the used DVD bin. Even so, I have read the comic, from beginning to end, before the movie came out. It was interesting, but empty, much like opening a good bottle of Scotch and drinking it all in one sitting. There was talent, intrigue, mystery, and plot in spades, and yet it was all for waste. Sadly, that in and of itself makes high marks for novels these days, even graphic ones.

I suppose the problem I have is with the word "sentimentalism". Moral sense theory is far down on my list of meanings for the word, while old movies set in Morocco are far ahead.

I suppose in order to address the state one may enter when looking through old family photo albums or spending the evening watching and listening to my mother go through the contents of her First Communion purse requires a new word, being that the old one is now sullied.

I like Kincaid, so there.

I think sentimentalism as the main post is discussing it is emotion without grounding in objective reality, and emotion for its own sake without action. I know plenty of people with fairly poor taste in art who are by far my superiors on the spiritual realm, and specifically in the area of putting their faith into action in works and not having it "on the cheap." In that sense, a taste for sentimental art is actually entirely compatible with not being a sentimentalist _in life_, that is, is compatible with having objective grounding and living out what one believes in ways that are hard. However, a particular type of sentimentalism in life--a desire to have emotion on the cheap, for example, and specifically to have emotion without sound moral grounding--will manifest itself in a particular type of sentimentalism in art. Consider, for example, the various propaganda movies (I have read of them but have been spared from seeing them) coming out for assisted suicide. They sound to me like they manifest a particular type of murderous sentimentalism. If you feel sorry enough for the person and feel enough about the person's loss of dignity, autonomy, blah, blah, you will support suicide and even assist it.

Nicely said, Lydia.

I recently went to a museum exhibit of Maxfield Parrish. He and then, later, Norman Rockwell were as mocked and scorned as Thomas Kincaid is today. Kincaid has terrific technique and really "sells" his vision on the canvas. His skyscapes are exquisite. I'm a cloud lover and have taken some fine photos of cloudscapes. If I could paint cloudscapes well, I would all day long.

Then there are very hard men like the warrior who gets a little "dust in my eye" when Kipling is read or some doggerel about honor; or the feeling I get when I'm in a foreign country and I see the American flag flying high and proud from an AF base on Crete.

But I have another thought. If the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are aspects of God and inextricably woven together, is it really possible to be good, and know the truth, if one's sense of the beautiful is weak, thin, shallow, or sentimental?

Should a saint be intelligent, critical minded, discriminating or just a simple fellow feeding the poor and a bunch of small animals (St. Martin de Poores)? But since God is intelligence and wisdom, wouldn't we expect a saint to be smart and experienced?

But what if the songs Jesus danced to and enjoyed at a wedding were the Jewish equivilent of Sugar Sugar or Penny Lane? Would his lack of taste affect our feelings about him?

I do think less of those people who tell me they hate Shakespeare. And I'd think less of Mother Theresa if she said he was a bore and a waste of time. It's nearly equivalent of saying the Bible is a bore and a waste of time.

But then again, Lydia, I'm called to remember that my neighbor, a fine Lutheran, faithful for most of his life (a brief lapse when young), a friend, told me in conversation one time that he had no special regard for music. It simply didn't do for him emotionally what it did for others.

I was stunned but kept my counsel to myself and thought about it later. He was right. Music didn't do for me what it once did in the past even though I continue to compose music and play instruments. I don't listen to it very often, now, either.

In fact, you could take art, literature, music, architecture, and even the Bible from me and I wouldn't mind it much.

Yet, in the room where I write this, I'm surrounded by Japanese kimonos hanging on one wall, a large antique Chinese Buddha painting, two large, antique Chinese silk paintings and a number of Japanese woodblock prints (Hiroshige, Hasui) and a few other fine works of art oriental art, and an original oil and pastel, from an original member of the Hudson River School by George Brewerton (1820-1901) who took off from San Francisco with news of the gold rush and joined Kit Carson in LA to go east with the info. He got sick and stopped in New Mexico and became the first American artist to draw and paint the area. (He had an amazing life and was a fine artist. Trained as a soldier at West Point where his dad was Superintendent.)

I can live without Beauty, but I prefer to have it around me. Same with the Bible and Shakespeare.

Oh yes, I almost forgot. I'm an evil, bourgeois Christian because I haven't sold my fine art and given the money to the poor.

I'll get right on it, aristocles.

Shame on me, indeed. How can I live with myself surrounded by beauty, sipping a single malt scotch, owning a Lexus, and planning to visit my second home at Lake Tahoe this weekend? Should I take the Jag or the Escalante?

Should I take the Jag or the Escalante?

Given your stated sentiments;If you ask me to chose between the judgment of the timorous and feminized Church hierarchy and the wisdom of my Founding Fathers, that's no contest, take the one that looks and feels more masculine and patriotic, of course.

Mark, I think that the disconnect we sometimes find between the truly good person (or even ourselves) and their lack of high taste in art is a condition resulting from the fall, and will not be totally repaired until God repairs the whole world.

Even for a saintly person, his fallen nature has not yet been repaired in full: his nature is still subject to temptations, to an unwillingness of the body to obey the spirit, and to the senses to be out of tune with the intellect. More to the point: the part of the soul that receives and grasps beauty need not be fully repaired when the will is fully obedient to God. Therefore, a good person may have to wait until heaven to "get" the deeper beauty that he cannot get now due to defect in his make-up.

Even so, it would be odd to find a good person who finds nothing of beauty in the Bible, who is simply deaf to the poetry and balance and power that is there. (Unless he tries reading the street-translation). And if a person is capable of grasping beauty in the Bible, then he should be able to locate it elsewhere in literature, even if not in certain great works that we all acclaim.

Lydia, I too like Kincaid and Rockwell. But I think that you will grant that there are different levels in our enjoyment of various artists. Even though we may all enjoy a ham sandwich and an apple, we don't find the same depth of satisfaction in that lunch that we would in a 4-course meal with complex salad, a fine wine, and chicken cordon bleu.

Lydia, I erred in my expression about Kinkade if you took it to mean I was dissing him. My point was about the incongruity of the tableau I presented. It's obvious that in much modern art, music, and writing, beauty is a rare find. I don't fault anyone for grabbing it where they can, even if they find it in kitschy or "sentimental" art, etc.

I don't think that's really where Ed (or Scruton) is going here, and it's two different types of sentimentality being spoken of. I think you're very much on target when you said "a particular type of sentimentalism in life--a desire to have emotion on the cheap, for example, and specifically to have emotion without sound moral grounding--will manifest itself in a particular type of sentimentalism in art." Miss O'Connor applied this even to pornography, saying that it's ultimately sentimental because it seeks to separate the sex act from its "hard purpose," in other words from any reality or moral grounding. I think one can say the same thing about hyper-violence in film.

There is a certain sentimentality which can result in tenderness and compassion. But it it only a sort of first step, like one's initial attraction to a person of the opposite sex. Just as you need to be aware of the fact that that initial attraction is nothing to build a marriage upon, we need to be aware that feelings of tenderness do not get us very far on the road to morality. As someone said, there's a type of "tenderness" that would kill half of mankind out of compassion for the other half.

Mark, my brother always says that when playing poker, you cannot bluff someone who is too stupid to pay attention. Same goes with satire, I guess.

Interesting, now I've seen how morality can be tied to the type of car you drive, or at least an attempt to do so.
For myself I would prefer the arch-consumer who has the good grace to abstain from an ostentatious display of public issue morality, who would refrain from supporting the shopping list of current hot button causes, usually with other people's money, and who, despite the sin of indulgence in expensive cars, can hold to familial affection and a morality still rooted in integrity and an inherent, humane respect for others.

Naturally I would prefer we all wallow in poverty, picking thru garbage cans, and crying for government programs forcing others to act as we wish, but life is replete with tough choices and neither want nor plenty determine morality or faith.

Unless I miss my bet I think the essence of Mr Feser's post centers on he who loves mankind in the abstract but has, shall we say, less or even no regard for people. A condition remarked upon in the past and having nothing intrinsically to do with one's bank account or other signs of the Devil.
It does however say much about self display and ultimately about, if anything, disengagement.

If having emotion on the cheap is wrong then making Christ a nice adornement to our possessions is a horror.

Mr Feser's post centers on he who loves mankind in the abstract but has, shall we say, less or even no regard for people.

Indeed, and if anyone thinks this phenomenon occurs only on the Left, they are themselves beholden to the process of dehumanization that ideology and tribal politics breeds. See the threads regarding Gates and Crowley for prime examples of bi-partisan misanthropy disguised as a noble "regard" for one's fellows.

Mark/Tony:

Oh yes, I almost forgot. I'm an evil, bourgeois Christian because I haven't sold my fine art and given the money to the poor.

I'll get right on it, aristocles.

Shame on me, indeed. How can I live with myself surrounded by beauty, sipping a single malt scotch, owning a Lexus, and planning to visit my second home at Lake Tahoe this weekend? Should I take the Jag or the Escalante?


If this is what you think I meant by my above comments, then your intelligence is about as deplorably abysmal as your interpretation here.

Kevin, a nice stab at even handedness, of a sort. Absolutist statements such as "anyone who thinks this phenomenon occurs only on the left", etc, are to be avoided at all costs. The scales of "dehumanization" will not be so easily tipped regardless of your excitability.

There was a bit more to Mr Feser's post and mine but to no avail it would seem.

Best to drop Gates/Crowley, the misanthropy you detest was best evidenced by just two men, and Crowley wasn't one of them

John T,
Well, Ed's list was the one that needed balance and I think I tried with 3 cultural archetypes with whom we are all familiar. Apparently it was the 3rd that raised your ire.

I said; When the lives of Christians are indistinquishable from those of the rest of society and, the "yes, you can have it all" ethos is more lived out than a vocation of self-denial and sacrifice, then yes, Christians have reduced the Gospels to a Hallmark collection of warm and fuzzy sentiments made superficially distinct by an ornamental Cross

You replied with a false choice that posits the conspicuous consumer of goods against the attention-seeking follower of trendy causes;

Interesting, now I've seen how morality can be tied to the type of car you drive, or at least an attempt to do so. or myself I would prefer the arch-consumer who has the good grace to abstain from an ostentatious display of public issue morality,

Both types are lost souls, dangerously so if the are Christian. Christ without the Cross is a project of the secular Left, but it manifests itself less explicitly and more insidiously within the Church too. Those who pursue professional and social advancement, material goods and comforts as ardently as their secular and amused neighbors and friends, without much reflection of the impact on their own children, but feel confirmed in their complacency and conformity by fish symbols and Live the Beatitudes bumper-stickers on their chariots are a Scandal.

As for Crowley-Gates, both were united in their excessively thin-skinned responses to each other and attempts by partisans of either side to script a larger narrative betray an emptiness at the heart of our social order.

Aris, baby, hedging your bet with that "if", ay? Good on ya, mate.

Kevin, I'd like to go on with you for a while but as you appear flawed in your ability to draw distinctions and attracted for that matter to blurring them, the attraction of prolonging the pain is waning.

A "lost soul" who advocates public power, reform it's sometimes called, perforce is more dangerous to the commonweal as well as to spirituality than the hedonist who minds is own business while still leading a reasonably moral life, much as this disturbs you.
You may equate the two in the weighing of their souls, and BTW do you receive any assistance and advice from God on this, but you are still stuck, and seem incapable of addressing the differences between the two rather broadly given types.

For your instruction may I once again bring up the issue of health care reform, as this exercise in massive coercion is euphemistically called. If you care you will observe increasing doses of unmitigated hate combined with references to nazi's [people who disagree with the use of force ]coming from the types enumerated in Mr Feser's post.

Now, with a leap and bound of your imagination, now, this instant, compare the two types, both indiscriminately consigned by you to the flames of hell having forfeited their souls. So judged I daresay with a severity that Calvin would pale at.

Your balance provided by your three arch types fits rather like the feet of Cinderella's sisters in the glass slipper, and for the reasons given.
Imperfect as they are, I judge not their souls leaving that for those anointed, still they are far preferable to the types Mr Feser lists, wedded as they be to both power and and a deeper decadence, allied inevitably to government and force, deeply enthralled with their constructed, false, self image, searchers for causes to lend a patina of meaning and superiority to their lives. But always searching for causes.

Crowley/Gates, please stop. Gates and Obama did more than show thin skin, they engaged in blatant racism.

A "lost soul" who advocates public power, reform it's sometimes called, perforce is more dangerous to the commonweal as well as to spirituality than the hedonist who minds is own business while still leading a reasonably moral life, much as this disturbs you

No John T we were not discussing a "hedonist" leading a reasonably moral life. We were talking about a Christian who retains the external vestiges of faith, while conforming to the sybaritic culture around him. Why are you trying to change the terms of the debate now?

I consigned no one to Hell, as you well know, and would think a life of Fox News, talk radio and howling the latest partisan slogans punishment enough, but then there is always that troubling Scriptural passage about the luke warm.

As for; "wedded as they be to both power and and a deeper decadence, allied inevitably to government and force", I can't think of a better description than some of those who led us into Iraq and are agitating for a reprise in Iran.


Kevin, I knew if I squeezed you hard enough the partisan bile would flow.
Your 1st para, Who is this "we" you refer to?
And therefore, how am I trying to change the terms of the debate, surely you are not referring to Mr Feser's post and my 1st and consistent line throughout. YOU may not be talking about a reasonably moral life but I am. Or is your permission required, or an authoritarian tic showing?
"We"? Get off it

2nd para, "consign to hell" is a play on words given your judgment of souls. You use it as an entree into the usual leftie whine about Fox News and talk radio. Kevin in this you display your distaste of dissent, perhaps worse. But ask yourself why all the other outlets available to leftists aren't enough, why the hatred of the few sources offering different viewpoints cause in you such acrimony. Or would you prefer just one party line, and what should that tell you?
Live with it pal, imagine how normal people feel about all the other sources pimping for the Democrats & Obama.

As you are incapable of finding fault with anything on the left you hang your hat on Iraq and Iran. By Iraq, you mean the legal war that continues to be funded by a Democrat Congress, by Iran, the State which murders it's citizens in the streets & which Obama wants to have tea with.
But I pass, it's been talked to death.

Meanwhile thugs are showing up at healthcare rallies, people are being bullied and pushed around, leading Democrats, not content to tell you what to think about that awful Fox News, are now calling average citizens nazis's, the fun is just beginning. A test for conscience perhaps?

Yeah, I'll take the guy who minds his own business, let God and Kevin judge his soul, and I'll worry about those ugly sorts enumerated by Mr Feser.

Nothing else left to say except;
Kevin, pray for my soul will you?

John T,
Do you know why you have the current cultural and political state of affairs? Because Christianiy has become little more than a hybrid security blanket and social identifier, that is why. All the ills which you bemoan, as well as those you promote, flow from that fact.

Of all the types described in this thread, the most appalling is the cozy Christian who has reduced his faith to a weekly hour long ritual, while crouching before the powers and principalities of this world the rest of his waking hours.

Until you grapple with that fact, and your very defensive posture suggests you won't, you will continue to be an accomplice in your own cultural dispossession.

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