Sense and sentimentality

One of the things that blocks our efforts to learn about the world and the people in it is the nature of the stories we are told, come to believe, and then tell others about how things work. This shared mythology, if it is incorrect, interferes with our efforts to understand ourselves and others and ultimately leads to bad decisions in the same way as if we were explorers attempting to find their way with inadequate maps.
The opposite of truth is not necessarily the lie. It can also be another form of dishonesty, namely sentimentality. This takes the form of a mawkish oversimplification of the world in which reality is entirely lost. The most trivial form of this tendency can be discerned in the funeral eulogy. Gone is the actual person with his strengths and flaws. He is replaced by a paragon of wit and virtue almost unrecognizable to those who knew him best. What happens to the stories of drunks and wife beaters when they die? They make no appearance on the obituary pages. Nothing, it is said, improves one's reputation more than death.
If our descent into sentimentality were confined to well-intentioned words of comfort to the bereaved, we could be forgiven. Unfortunately, this particular form of distortion is much more widespread and consequential. In fact, our whole self-help-through-consumption, advertising culture is one long appeal to a sentimental view of the world in which we are just one purchase away from having the life we want. Don't those attractive young people with their new trucks and cold beers look happy? Could life get any better than that? Don't you enjoy those commercials that emphasize how relatively old, fat, and friendless most of us are?
In a recent poll 81 percent of Americans say that they regularly talk to God. (It is interesting that if someone reports that God is talking to them, they are either seen as prophets or risk involuntary hospitalization.) Whatever comfort people derive from their faith and however much good is done in the name of one religion or another, the stories on which people rely to deal with the ultimate questions - Why are we here? What constitutes a moral life? What happens to us when we die? - are answered by most people by reference to archaic texts containing often contradictory stories that differ from one culture to another. No evidence of the sort that we are accustomed to demanding in other areas of our lives is required to support the truth of any element of faith; we simply believe it. In return we are given the hope provided by prayer and the assurance of immortality, no small gift in a world preoccupied with the fear of death.
Another arena in which sentimentality holds sway is politics. In choosing people to lead us through perilous times we depend on those who divide the world along the stark lines of good and evil, us and them, and promise to protect us against economic turbulence and terrorists who seek to destroy us. All of us would like to believe that there exist figures so powerful and wise that we can depend on them to care for us. The fact that these people, once elected, almost invariably disappoint us, only makes us vulnerable to the next candidate who promises to do better. The cycle of dependency, credulity, and disillusionment plays out again and again without our learning much from it or developing a real skepticism about the sentimental stories that successive generations of politicians use to get elected. Certainly there are differences, personally and philosophically, between candidates. But we wait in vain for the messiah who will lead us out of the wilderness of confusion and insecurity in which we find ourselves. Such a longing can only beget disappointment.
If you want to know if someone is telling you a sentimental story, ask yourself, "Does this sound oversimplified? Is he talking as if there were only two alternatives (such as victory or humiliation) to solving this problem?" If life teaches us anything, it is that it's complicated with many possible outcomes, only a few of which we control. If you feel like you're hearing a children's story in which the characters are cartoon depictions instead of real people, run for your life.
In our efforts to create satisfying and lasting relationships we are at great risk of disappointment if we imagine that any relationship is going to resemble the sentimental and idealized portrayals we see on our movie and television screens. The ambiguity and discernment required by the process of investing our love in someone who will reciprocate and whom we can depend on over time is a long way from the instant attractions and "happily ever after" outcomes that comprise the Hollywood version of reality. The false images of what constitutes a real and satisfying relationship are a source of great confusion to many people who are apt to oscillate between naiveté and cynicism as they search for a model of human connectedness that is realistic.
Childhood is the only time that a sentimental outlook is adaptive. Most fairy tales are comforting with their simplified characters and morals. As we become more aware of life's complexity, however, we need to relinquish the reassurance implied in the magical triumph of all that is good. If we do not make this transition we are asking for a lifetime of disenchantment as adults.
Another pervasive form of sentimentality is nostalgia. It seems that everyone is old enough to remember a better time when the world was safer, everyone was kinder, children were more respectful, and where more people looked like us. What happened to that time? Where is Norman Rockwell when we need him? An astonishing number of citizens cling to a belief that we need a return to a fantasized past in order to reify the values that made this country great.
If we are ever to understand the world we live in and the people who inhabit it, we must develop a capacity for separating truth from sentimentality. We need to apply the same discrimination that we attempt to apply in our financial lives, namely an ability to discern value and a healthy skepticism of those whose job it is to defraud us. We must learn to accept the ambiguity, imperfections, and uncertainty that characterize real life while avoiding the over-simplification that is the hallmark sentimentality. We must, in other words, learn to distinguish reality from illusion if we are to make good decisions about how to live and especially about whom to live with. Our happiness depends on the quality of these choices.