On Jan 20, 2009, at 4:04 PM, [email protected] wrote:
You can also say"his sentiments do him honor" and it is not an
insult. Does sentimentality track back to Rousseau and his idea of
man as naturally good? It seems to have moralistic overtones as well
as emotional ones and it always seems to assume the higher ground.
After all who would be against kitten pictures or pretty cottages in
spite of neither being ideally behaved or constructed. (WAs the
Republican flaw their sentimentality?)
Or Coleridge's "strong emotions recollected in tranquillity."
Romanticism asserted that strong emotional connections led to strong
decisions, whereas Neoclassicism put it conversely. I think public
discourse goes back and forth on this: Do we need to feel a certain
way in order to act [= decide] a certain way, or do we act a certain
way in order to feel a certain way. Which is the distinction between
cognitive behavioralism and Freudian psychiatry: we can choose to
behave in order to change how we feel (behavioralists), or we can
understand what provokes our feelings in order to act (Freudians).
Sentimentality I believe is a hallmark [!] of improperly simplified
Romanticism. Let's not forget that media--TV, newspapers, movies,
etc.--has a great deal to play in this. They tend to reduce their
subject matter to small chunks--sound bites, highlight reels, movie
trailers, headlines, etc. AND they are the products of industrialism,
which, like other functionaries, break down whatever they work on into
small, discrete, interchangeable items, to be handled and manipulated
with maximum efficiency. Ultimately, to further their purposes,
industries resort to manipulating emotions, to "selling the sizzle,
not the steak." The result of that is emotions on steroids,
ultimately, what we call sentimentality.
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Michael Brady
[email protected]
