Debating the value Sentimentality PDF

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Essay on the Debating the value Of Sentimentality...

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Debating the value Sentimentality

Originally, the term sentimentality applied to a situation where strong emotions and feelings were followed as a way to guide an individual towards the truth. In the current society, people talk a lot about sentimentality and sentimental people without even realizing that the whole idea around which it revolved seems to have changed over time. The application of the term sentimentality in the current society is more intertwined with people’s everyday experiences. The establishment that has been put forth by cultural studies have made the whole idea of sentimentalism more interesting. Sentimentality is currently more of abandoning reasoning and logic for a response to strong emotions concerning a given issue. The reality is that, for every occurrence, there is always a driver aspect. That is, something happened that in turn led to the occurrence of the given situation so that in pursuit of the truth, it is worth analyzing and reasoning to gain an in-depth understanding of the matter at hand. Abandoning such logic and under the influence of feelings and emotions could result in chaotic situations. The expression of strong and unusual attachment to objects, events, places, and beliefs constitutes a sentimental person on the positive side. However, sentimentality can be a danger to a person’s health, collective future, and well-being. In most cases, sentimentality brings a feeling that is pre-packaged or inoffensive in other people. There are also instances that sentimentality arises in people with creepy behaviors such as murderers and dictators. Therefore even though sentimentality may bring a perception of warmth, it comes with certain downsides that make it bad.

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One of the major negative aspects of sentimentality is its relationship with nostalgia. While nostalgia is basically an act of recollection of the events in the past, sentimentality is a manifestation of an individual who is always engaged in nostalgia. The whole idea is a way of trying to avoid the real world by holding on to things of the past an aspect that is captured in the objection to falsification by Newman. The implication of that sentimentality is basically applying nostalgia in the present. The fact is that sentimentality and nostalgia are one and the same thing, the negative aspects of nostalgia are thus the negative aspects of sentimentality too. Newman states ‘’sentimentality’’ has not only evaluative but descriptive sense. In life, people lose a lot of things to the past. Some are good while others are bad. While nostalgia tries to help hold on to the past memories including memories of losses that were unprocessed are held on to. Accessing such memories in most cases wreaks emotional confusion in people and in a way fuel stress and depression and that in most cases impairs their judgment and actions. An individual in such a state will always make mistakes as he pursues the truth by following his emotions since those emotions are already impacted by nostalgia. Sentimentality misrepresents human experiences in that the focus is on what makes us good, the experiences that we enjoyed or those that other people enjoyed. Sentimentality works as a one-way therapy where the patient is advised to ignore the bad experiences and focus only on the good ones in order to move on an aspect that, Pugmire terms sentimental falsification and a situation which according to him involves subordination of the truth. It is important to understand that sentimentalism only makes humans defeat their negative emotions and it is not good for the health of an individual both physically and mentally. Acknowledging the positive experiences while defeating the negative ones is similar to stepping on the gas and brake pedal of

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a car at the same time. There is always an internal pressure that will build due to the negative experiences defeated. Defeating negative experiences result in negative emotions from within. The misrepresentation brought about by sentimentality impairs individual’s ability to handle the underlying emotions aspects that could result in anxiety and depression. Ignoring negative experiences results in overwhelming underlying inward emotions which in some cases could be conflicting too. The overall effect is psychological distress and symptoms of evoking emotional stress which are all harmful to human health. According to Savile, Sentimentality is sentimental falsification that is aimed at protecting oneself. However, from a psychological perspective, sentimentality is a defense mechanism. It is basically a defense wall to the acknowledgment of painful emotions mostly anger, grief or shame. Sentimentality is a possible cause of narcissism. If it does not result in narcissism then it can come out as a symptom of narcissism. The existence of the symptom in individual results to narcissistic personality disorder. This is a disorder that is characterized by arrogant thinking, lack of empathy, self-centeredness, and lack of consideration for the others. Individuals with this trait seem to be manipulative, demanding, patronizing and selfish. This behavior affects the individual’s relationship with people from work all the way to the family. Change is an aspect of the society that everyone should be able to embrace. However, people with narcissistic disorder are always resistant to change even when they are causing problems in society. As Savile states A sentimental person in this category would gratify emotion or image of oneself to often feel protective thus meaning not letting go of anything provided he feels he is right and would reveal some truth. He would not care whoever is hurt in the processes of pursuing the claimed truth.

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Because of their nature, they do not feel that at one point there is a need to change their perspective and perceive the issue in a manner that is safe to the entire society. Sentimentality is not a good practice when it comes to facing problems that people face in life. While Savile states that there is always something wrong with sentimentality, it appears that there is a lot of hidden feelings and truths applied in a sentimentalist perspective such that real-life problems are made to look simpler. Sentimentality ensures that the complexity of situations that humans go through are ignored and only the simplest aspects allowed to appear. The aspect of suppressing the complexities do not help deal with an entire situation as it arises. Sentimentality is an antonym to mature realism and it goes against everything that realists believe in. While mature realism will help create a balanced analysis of both the negative and positive sides of a given issue, sentimentality basically ignores the negatives and concentrates on the positive. Sentimentalism basically implements cheap idealization without allowing a room for examination of the bad aspects of a given. Cheap idealization results in insufficient information and thus the lack of full knowledge of the probabilities involved in every decision an Individual makes. Sentimentality can be deemed as an enemy to morality and clear thought. This could be drawn from the objection to falsification that sentimentality generates false belief about reality resulting to problematic actions. Sentimentality always prefers what an individual wants to be true over what is exactly true. The whole perspective of sentimentality is to make a person feel good in every possible situation by basically clouding the negative sides even if they could contribute to the greater good of the entire solution. Sentimentality gives an individual a false self by ensuring that one feels that he is more compassionate than he is. In the concept of

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economic development, sentimentality has played a role in cheating the public. The developed countries like the United States and the United Kingdom have this assumption that people in the third world countries are so poor that it is impossible for them to do anything to change their situation. This is basically the idea behind the developed countries giving handouts to the third world countries which are an aspect far from the truth (Dalrymple, 2010). There is not even a single country that has ever been brought to prosperity through the handouts they receive from the developed nations. The countries escape poverty on their own. Despite the good feelings that comes with sentimentality, from a general perspective, it is bad. I agree with the argument from Savile and Pugmire who mentioned that sentimentality is bad. In contemporary society, sentimentality is associated with the abandonment of logic and reasoning and solving issues based on emotions and feelings. Based on Pugmire, the fact that logical reasoning is not part of finding the solution eliminates the possibility of identifying the root of the issue in question. This perspective makes sentimentality as an art bad. The relationship between sentimentality and nostalgia coupled with their ability to fuel stress and depression also makes sentimentality bad for human health. Further, sentimentality misrepresents human experiences in that the focus is on what makes us good, the experiences that we enjoyed or those that other people enjoyed. Sentimentality is a defense mechanism applied as a means of acknowledging anger, grief, and shame. Failure to accept the existence of any of the three situations in an individual’s life eliminates the person’s ability to handle the situations and move on from them. Psychologically, this is a bad aspect of sentimentality. Sentimentality simplifies complex situations by covering up the complexities associated with such situations. It ignores the creation of a balance in the analysis of both the negative and positive sides of a given issue an

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aspect that makes life experiences unrealistic. Sentimentality can be deemed as an enemy to morality and clear thought as it always prefers what an individual wants to be true over what is exactly true. Gives an individual a false self by ensuring that one feels that he is more compassionate than he is. With all these downsides of sentimentality, it is just right to conclude that sentimentality is bad to an individual, society and any country’s economy.

References

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● Dalrymple, T. (2010). Don't give the poor a wealth of false hopes. Retrieved from https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/190464/Don-t-give-the-poor-a-wealth-of-f alse-hopes. ● Marcus, G. E. (2010). Sentimental citizen: Emotion in democratic politics . Penn State Press....