I'm having an argument with myself over sentimentalism. Last night I left this comment over at Dr. Helen's blog:

I don't believe in the inherent goodness of man at all (often just the opposite), yet I often have feelings I would describe as sentimental.

I think it is very possible to hate humanity and still be a sentimentalist. It can be an emotional survival skill, and I don't think it requires any belief in the goodness of humanity.

The Wiki entry is interesting:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentimentalism_%28literature%29

***QUOTE***

(1) An overindulgence in emotion, especially the conscious effort to induce emotion in order to enjoy it. (2) An optimistic overemphasis of the goodness of humanity (sensibility), representing in part a reaction against Calvinism[citation needed], which regarded human nature as depraved.

***END QUOTE***

The two are very different. But it also shows Wiki bias. You don't have to be a Calvinist to regard human nature as depraved.

"Sentimentalism is an upbeat overemphasis on the inherent goodness of mankind that judges what is good or evil according to how well it accords with our feelings, or the feelings of people we want to impress."

As I debated this with myself, an absolutely awful thought popped into my mind. The fact that Adolf Hitler (hardly a man who believed in human goodness) cried for days over the death of his pet canary. Now, I don't know how true that story is, and it might be apocryphal. But the fact that it even crossed my mind means that I had carried my internal debate too far. I violated Godwin's Law having an argument with myself!

Such follies should not be.

I think it's better for me to "butch it up," and not give a rat's ass whether I am a sentimentalist.

But see, Hitler crying over the dead canary is no canard; according to an OSS profile, it was part of his Jekyll and Hyde personality. So if I reject my sentimental feelings, I might end up becoming sociopathic, and murdering millions!

I just can't win, can I?

MORE: Speaking of sentimental mass murderers, what about the environmentalists who want to wipe out humanity? Are not many of them driven by a grotesquely misanthropic form of environmental sentimentalism?

Does an excess of sentimentalism trigger misanthropy? Or does misanthropy trigger an excess of sentimentalism?

Or don't these things matter?

My concern is not so much with the "rightness" or the "wrongness" of sentimentalism as it is whether people are being manipulated without understanding the mechanisms that manipulate them.

UPDATE: An interesting comment from Lin W cites the following dictionary definition from the1888 Worcester's Academic Dictionary, A New Etymological Dictionary of the English Language, which according to Lin:

defines "Sentimentality" as "affectation of feeling". "Affectation" being defined as "false pretense; artificial show; insincerity; artifice."

Which tells me the meaning has shifted from "pretending to be emotional about something" to the feeling itself.

First of all, we are talking about sentimentalism, not sentimentality. According to my dictionary, sentimentalism is defined as "quality or state of being sentimental." Sentimentality OTOH, is defined as the "quality or state of being sentimental, esp to excess or affectation."

So the two words have slightly different meanings. The latter implies insincerity, while the former does not.

However, the second definition of "sentimental" can imply insincerity:

Deliberately overemphasizing inherent human goodness in the face of clear evidence to the contrary would fall into the second definition of the word. And judging what is good or evil according to how well it accords with our feelings -- while that would also be a form of sentimentalism, I would call such blindness to reason sentimentalist extremism.