Sentiment

Have you seen the Velazquez paintings of dwarves? If I had, I hadn’t remembered and certainly hadn’t thought about them. Theodore Dalrymple mentions them in his book Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality as an example of real art versus kitsch. As kitsch he referred to something like this kind of thing.

On the Velazquez paintings, Dalrymple states how the care and exactness of the artists, exercising his discipline with the same majesty for the dwarves as for a king or emperor, highlights the nobility of his subjects, their humanity, intelligence and emotional depth. We as viewers are moved by these works because they demand of us to reconsider our previous assumptions. We have to disregard old stereotypes and see, perhaps for the first time, that our circle of empathy is widening. These paintings, in the same was that novels do, can expand our worldview, by showing us where we were wrong and demanding that we alter our views. We may feel pity and sadness, but it is in the process of a developing insight and generosity. This article, which also has reproductions of the paintings, expresses this quite well.

With the sentimental paintings, we have a sort of pleasurable feeling about what a lovely person we are in caring about these dear, unfortunate innocents and we want everyone else to know that we are moved, so moved, because we are empathic, so empathic. It’s not a matter of learning something but rather about proving something. It’s not about challenging our judgments, but about consolidating our convictions.

Dalrymple’s also pretty damning about the trend in education to teach children almost exclusively the history of dichotomised events. So, they learn about the Atlantic Slave Trade and the Holocaust – in which there are good guys and bad guys, victims and evildoers. Life, history, art and politics all come to appear as simple polarisations between right and wrong. There’s no emphasis in addressing what is ambiguous, ambivalent and uncertain. It’s a case of choosing a side (and that’s obvious) and sticking to it.

My father often bangs on (sorry, Dad; I know that sounds discourteous, but I’ve heard it so many times from your lips) about how no one knows their history these days. I was rather pleased that he couldn’t tell me who the missing wife was when I named five of Henry VIII’s (it was Anne of Cleves that I forgot and she wasn’t around for long). Anyway, he has a point.

Of course, he remembers ‘the version of history’ that he was taught. To be fair he’s added to his school history by extensive reading, though I think we all have a habit of absorbing a slightly partisan view. It keeps the cognitive dissonance from becoming too painful.

The point I’m trying to make is the old one: it’s really hard to consider viewpoints other than our own and narratives that counter dearly held beliefs. Because this is tough on a personal level, there’s all the more reason for educators to do it on our behalf. Dalrymple’s claim in Spoilt Rotten is that such an obligation is sadly neglected and increasingly so. I’m inclined to accept his critique. And we see it manifested in the world of politics as well as the universe of social media.

Of course, Sinnott-Armstrong’s Think Again was written in part to combat this growing trend to shout down, hunker in silos and refuse to listen to reasons – as well as refuse to give – or even have – reasons of one’s own.

And my defence of uncertainty is another way to consider this issue.

But Dalrymple’s criticism of sentimentality goes beyond these matters. He finds the cult of emotional expression to be especially obnoxious. I am sure he will get to the mourning for Princess Diana – it’s not come up so far in the book – but I remember at the time being astonished by the public reaction. And it wasn’t limited to this country. People across the world seemed strangely moved by the death of this woman they had never met. If you asked why, they might say that she was young and had been betrayed and was vulnerable and beautiful. Do those qualities make a death more unfortunate? It seems so. They might say, think of her sons! And I’d reply that many children lose their parents – it’s desperately sad, but why don’t we cry for all of them? Why these two? Because they’re royalty? Really? I couldn’t understand it at all.

Look, I cried when my car and a swallow collided. I saw the collision and the blood on the fender and I knew it was the time of year when they’re feeding nestlings. But I was involved in that. And, an hour later, though it still saddened me to think of it, I was pretty much over it. It’s not that I don’t have private feelings; just that I think I’m confused by public ones.

You see, it wasn’t enough for people to feel sad about Diana: they had to stand in queues, leave flowers, sign books, cry on television and on the radio. Their distress was validated by being witnessed.

Witnessed. Yes. I feel I’m on the opposite side here. I have a rather ambiguous relationship with being witnessed. It makes me feel that I am less real. Playing a part. Being unwitnessed is when I feel real. When I am being, not seen to be.

Why, in addition, do people wish to be seen to be distressed? To show their emotional depths? As if this personal treasure trove of selfhood is only of value if it is made public? Whereas I feel that it is cheapened by being brought to light.

Dalrymple contends that this sentimental mode means that people must feel every tragedy as their own in order to be a virtuous person one must feel every tragedy as one’s own. Fortunately, only a few tragedies come to light, so when it comes to those famous cases - like the Diana's death or the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann - people feel the duty to react as though affected personally. And they are outraged by the failure of others to emote to the same level. The Queen, brought up in a very different era where fortitude was a virtue rather than a perceived vice, was condemned for not weeping and Tony Blair achieved great kudos by referring to Diana as 'the People's Princess.' It's interesting to consider here, as Dalrymple does (yes, he's got to Diana - I read on before this was due to be published), Coriolanus' refusal to show his war wounds to the mob - he does deserve our condemnation for his pride and caste snobbery - but he also has this concept of separating private suffering from public emoting.

Dalrymple speaks from a staunchly traditionalist and conservative stance. He is polemical and I find some of his views to share a little of Coriolanus's elitist bias. He does not have the generosity or insight of Will Davies when the latter considers some similar areas of changing values in Nervous States. But he is pursuing what I do consider to be a worrying trend. When force of feeling replaces truth, insight and reason, we lose our ability to judge wisely. When life is dichotomised into heroes and villains, we lose a breadth of empathy in favour of an illusion of depth. I don't believe that this will help us manage a polarised world.

However, Dalrymple himself is as polarised as the next man. He damns utilitarianism and Peter Singer in particular through what I can only read as a straw man argument. Indeed, it seems that many of his contentions are backed up more by personal anecdote and a dramatically simplified, one-sided view of a situation (which is one of the things he condemns sentimentalists for) than by empirical evidence and sound arguments. His own anger, frustration and disdain seem to me to have got in the way of a reasoned approach to the subject. That said, perhaps the book is meant to be essentially a rant. But if so, it falls foul of much of what he is attacking and in addition does little to enhance the public conversation.

But still. Back to the death of Diana, specifically: what did this teach us about empathy and compassion? She was beautiful, popular and famous. We were not learning to expand our empathy for the deprived, downtrodden and dispossessed. Nor were we, as in tragedy, encouraged to see the victim as in any sense at all as a contributor to her own downfall, as a figure of complexity, of human vulnerability and human flaws. We were valuing feelings without following the reasons. And that poses potential problems, as we've seen.

So what I'd wish, if I had a wish, is that instead of loving the equivalent of kitsch, we'd learn the value of Velazquez’s dwarves.