Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality
Encyclopedia
Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality (subtitle in US editions: How Britain is Ruined by Its Children) is a book by the British
writer and retired doctor and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, originally published in 2010. Polemical
in nature, the book contends that sentimentality
has become culturally entrenched in British society, with harmful consequences. The author uses a range of cultural
, educational
, political
, media
and literary
issues—including falling standards in education, UK aid
policies for African development, the death
of Diana, Princess of Wales
, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
, and the work and life of Sylvia Plath
—to illustrate what he sees as the danger of abandoning logic
in favour of sentimentality, which he describes as "the progenitor, the godparent, the midwife of brutality". Much of Dalrymple's analysis is underpinned by his experience of working with criminals
and the mentally ill.
The book was described by The Spectator
, as a "an engaging rant against the folly, claptrap, self-indulgence and hypocrisy of mankind" and "Dalrymple's case is that the substitution of crude emotion for dispassionate analysis of public issues, and the mentality which demands exaggerated and public outpourings of mawkish sentimentality at critical moments, has distorted the values of public life", while The Scotsman
commented that the "breeze of cynicism wafts like an acrid rebuke through these tersely opinionated pages. It fans the flames of indignation, warming the cockles of unreconstructed reactionaries' hearts".
In an essay in 1999, he identified what he saw as the harmful role played by sentimentality in a case involving Stephen Lawrence. Dalrymple wrote that "the response to the Stephen Lawrence case is another example of how the rule of law is to be supplanted by the rule of sentiment—and it is yet one more instance of what one might call the Dianafication of British public life, in which transitory popular enthusiasm trumps venerable tradition". In a 2004 essay, he analysed how sentimentality towards children was closely linked with violence
and neglect
, particularly in the poorest sections of British society
: "The upbringing of children in much of Britain is a witches' brew of sentimentality, brutality, and neglect, in which overindulgence in the latest fashions, toys, or clothes, and a television in the bedroom are regarded as the highest—indeed only—manifestations of tender concern for a child's welfare".
Before the book's publication, Dalrymple analysed two high-profile cases in the British media
involving Raoul Moat
and Jon Venables.
Dalrymple described Moat as "a brutal sentimentalist. He used the extremity of his behaviour to persuade himself that he felt something—supposedly love—very deeply, and that this was the motive and justification of his behaviour". Referring to Venables, Dalrymple wrote, "Probation officers persistently refused to see the writing on Venables's wall. They explained away the obvious signs of his continuing bad character. Just a little more kindness, understanding. What contempt he must have felt! Thus sentimentality, a refusal to face unpleasant realities, causes crime".
.jpg)
Dalrymple begins the chapter by citing several examples to illustrate how sentimentality is increasing as a cultural phenomenon
in the United Kingdom
. He then analyses falling education
standards in the country, and links these trends to "powerful intellectual currents" that "feed into the great Sargasso Sea
of modern sentimentality about children", and asserts that in this regard the ideas of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and the psychologist Steven Pinker
have been particularly influential. He then examines a newspaper article urging reform
of the British prison system
. Dalrymple states that the article aroused an emotion "whose effect, if not its intention, was to convince the person experiencing it that he was a person of superior sensibility and compassion", and that such emotionality "often attaches to the question of crime and punishment in contemporary Britain". Dalrymple also cites a modern tendency for criminals under the influence of drugs
or alcohol
to not be held morally responsible
for their crimes. Dalrymple takes issue with this, and agrees with Aristotle
that a man is doubly culpable: first for the offense committed, and second for having intoxicated himself. Dalrymple also maintains that it is "the sheerest sentimentality to see drug addicts as the victims of an illness" and that, "sentimentality is now a mass phenomenon almost beyond criticism or even comment".
, including that sentimentality does not manipulate
emotions, cause false emotions to be shown, or distort perception and interfere with rational thought.
of the Family Impact Statement
. Dalrymple writes that such statements "are not permitted to influence the outcome of a case. They are made only after a jury has made its verdict".. As a result, kitsch displays of emotion are encouraged in court, of no practical benefit.
, and how certain media interpreted the lack of emotion from the girl’s parents as evidence of guilt. Dalrymple writes that the "demand that emotion should be shown in public, or be assumed not to exist and therefore indicate a guilty mind, is now not an uncommon one", and cites two similar cases involving Joanne Lees
and Lindy Chamberlain
. Dalrymple then analyses the outcry from the public and the media to the lack of emotion shown by the Queen after the death of Princess Diana, and contends that "the tabloid newspapers carried out what can only be called a campaign of bullying against the sovereign" and that those gathered outside Buckingham Palace were "bullying rather than expressing any genuine grief". He concludes by asserting that the sentimentality shown by both the media and the public “was inherently dishonest in a way that parallels the dishonesty that lies behind much sentimentality itself".
, whom he describes as the "patron saint of self-dramatization", and interprets Margaret Drabble's descriptions of Plath as a "willing casualty" and "supremely vulnerable" to mean "virtues of a high order". He then examines how Plath blamed her father for her suffering, and identifies him in her poem "Daddy"
with Nazism
and makes allusions to the holocaust. Dalrymple writes that "Plath felt it right to allude to one of the worst and most deliberate inflictions of mass-suffering in the whole of human history, merely on the basis that her father, who died when she was young, was German…the metaphorical use of the holocaust measures not the scale of her suffering, but of her self-pity
". He asserts that before Plath, self-pity "was regarded as a vice, even a disgusting one, that precluded sympathy", and that "the appropriation of the suffering of others to boost the scale and significance of one's own suffering is now a commonplace." He then analyses a number of figures, including Binjamin Wilkomirski
and Margaret Seltzer
, who he alleges "make bogus claims to victim status" and whose stories reveal perfectly "the dialectic between sentimentality and brutality". Dalrymple ends the chapter by analysing victimhood
in the criminal justice
system and concludes, "For the sentimentalist, of course, there is no such thing as a criminal, only an environment that has let him down".
Dalrymple asserts that across the globe chronic poverty
has decreased in the past twenty-five years, but mainly in China and India. As a result, "Africa is an exception and therefore is the current focus of sentimentality about poverty". In this context he examines Gordon Brown
's desire as prime minister
to ensure that every child in Africa receive a primary education. Dalrymple questions whether there is a link between improving educational standards and increasing economic growth in the continent, and cites the experience of Tanzania
under Julius Nyerere
, Equatorial Guinea
under Macias Nguema
, and Sierra Leone
's fate after a "long history of historical effort and achievement" as evidence that this may not be so, and argues that Africa's priority is access to markets. Dalrymple concludes that Brown's position is pure sentimental posturing and smacks of "Singerian
moral universalism", which is "preposterous—psychologically, theoretically, and practically".
In the book's Conclusion, Dalrymple contends that "in field after field, sentimentality has triumphed", and this has had a number of negative consequences, including the lives of millions of children being blighted by overindulgence and neglect
; the destruction of educational standards; and brutality
wherever policies suggested by sentimentality have been advocated.
on 29 July 2010 by Gibson Square Books Ltd. The book had at least one alternative sub-title before The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality was finally chosen, and the US edition had the sub-title How Britain is Ruined by Its Children. The book's front cover featured a wrongly attributed comment, "a taboo-shattering, sacred cow-slaughtering, myth-destroying little gem of a book" by Dominic Lawson
; Lawson had in fact written this in 2007 in a review of another Dalrymple US-published book, Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy. The paperback
edition of Spoilt Rotten appeared in the UK on 11 August 2011.
In The Spectator
, Jonathan Sumption
praised the book, writing "The public hysteria surrounding such high-profile incidents as the death of the Princess of Wales and the search for Madeleine McCann, or the eccentricities of the MacPherson report on the death of Stephen Lawrence are analysed with the author's customary mixture of shrewdness, cynicism and misanthropic pessimism. These phenomena have of course been analysed before, and many of the same points have been made. But Dalrymple is good at relating them to broader trends in our society". The book was described by Toby Young
in The Daily Telegraph
as being an "excellent new book attacking the cult of sentimentality" and that Dalrymple also "makes a convincing case that standards in British education have plummeted in the last few decades". Young also reviewed the book on his blog
No Sacred Cows, where he wrote, "...the remarkable thing about Spoilt Rotten is that Dalrymple never lets his anger obscure his compassion. Throughout the book you get a powerful sense that his outrage is rooted in a commitment to social justice. Yes, he believes members of the underclass should be weaned off the nanny state and forced to take responsibility for themselves, but he also believes it is left-wing intellectuals who have reduced them to a state of helpless infantalism, mainly through the promotion of the cult of sentimentality. He is not a Christian, but believes that it is only when Britain's benefit dependents rediscover the doctrine of Original Sin that they will be able to help themselves". Also in The Daily Telegraph, Ed West gave the book a favourable review, writing "Sentimentality, in which crude emotion replaces dispassionate analysis, affects all aspects of public life, such as the debates over education, prison places and overseas aid. As Dalrymple points out, no country has ever escaped poverty via international aid—but never mind, since what matters is not actually doing anything about state education or crime or Africa, but being seen to be caring about the 'vulnerable'". The book was listed as a non-fiction choice by Steven Poole
in The Guardian
, who wrote, "Dalrymple alternates vague ranting with surgical demolition (he is excellent on the fatuity of 'family impact statements' in court), and exhibits impressive thrift, in these uncertain times, with his research, getting tens of pages out of a single visit to WHSmith and the purchase of two newspapers. Perhaps the most suggestive sentence is tucked away in an endnote about tattoos: 'I wish I had the space to elaborate on the dermatological semiotics of violence in England'. If only someone had awarded him that space". The book was also the subject of a spoof
review by John Crace
in The Guardian
, which satirised the book and its author. The book was chosen by Jasper Fforde
on the Penguin Books
website as one of the books he would most like to get for Christmas. Fforde wrote that the book, "makes uneasy reading for huggy liberals, and asks harsh questions over the bizarre sense of sentimentality that seems to have befuddled us Brits ever since millions of us queued up to sign a book of condolences for a princess we didn't know. Dalrymple looks at the downside of an overblown sense of sentiment, which resulted this year with a murderous thug who saw himself as a victim and found 32,000 people agreeing with him, and even opening a tribute Facebook page in his posthumous honor". Spoilt Rotten also made Thomas Sowell
's list of Christmas books for 2010. In a positive review in The Scotsman
, Tom Adair wrote, "Dalrymple tackles sentimentality on every front. He is frequently witty, always punchy and sometimes rapier-like, as he analyses the 'bunk' of his opponents to within an inch of its cant". In the Daily Express
, Neil Hamilton
reviewed the book positively, writing, "Theodore Dalrymple's excellent Spoilt Rotten offers some thought-provoking insights and explains how emotional constipation in our national psyche has become emotional diarrhoea".
In a negative review in The Sunday Telegraph, historian Noel Malcolm
suggested that Dalrymple "is spreading his net too widely, so that 'sentimentality' comes to stand for any moralising view that does not satisfy his own scrutiny; it's not that these things should not be criticised, merely that sentimentalism may not be the key to what is wrong with them". Malcolm also questioned Dalrymple's views on modern educational theory, writing "these ideas have long and complex histories, in which sentimentalism is only part of the story. The 'progressive' attack on discipline, and on traditional institutions such as the family, was concerned as much with power-structures and class as it ever was with sentiment or human goodness", and took issue with Dalrymple's assessment of Rousseau. In a short negative review of the book in The Independent on Sunday, which appeared after the book's 2011 paperback release, Brandon Robshaw wrote, "There is some good sense here, but it's vitiated by the pompous, peevish tone, the futile nostalgia for an airbrushed past, unnecessary sideswipes (at John Rawls, for example, or climate science) and by the poor editing". In an ambivalent review on the website MercatorNet
, Francis Phillips wrote "The book leaves one with the impression that it is a somewhat hotchpotch compendium of views and articles already well rehearsed by the author—though nonetheless true for all that. What is disheartening is his bleak attitude towards human nature; having diagnosed the disease he is at a loss to suggest a remedy".
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
writer and retired doctor and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple, originally published in 2010. Polemical
Polemic
A polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
in nature, the book contends that sentimentality
Sentimentality
Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason....
has become culturally entrenched in British society, with harmful consequences. The author uses a range of cultural
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
, educational
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
, political
Politics
Politics is a process by which groups of people make collective decisions. The term is generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments, but also applies to institutions, fields, and special interest groups such as the...
, media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
and literary
Literature
Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
issues—including falling standards in education, UK aid
Aid
In international relations, aid is a voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another, given at least partly with the objective of benefiting the recipient country....
policies for African development, the death
Death of Diana, Princess of Wales
On 31 August 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died as a result of injuries sustained in a car accident in the Pont de l'Alma road tunnel in Paris, France. Her companion, Dodi Fayed, and the driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, Henri Paul, were pronounced dead at the scene of the accident. Fayed's...
of Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales was the first wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, whom she married on 29 July 1981, and an international charity and fundraising figure, as well as a preeminent celebrity of the late 20th century...
, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann
Disappearance of Madeleine McCann
Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007. She was on holiday with her parents and twin siblings in the Algarve region of Portugal. The British girl went missing from an apartment, in the central area of the resort of Praia da Luz, a few days before her fourth...
, and the work and life of Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
—to illustrate what he sees as the danger of abandoning logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
in favour of sentimentality, which he describes as "the progenitor, the godparent, the midwife of brutality". Much of Dalrymple's analysis is underpinned by his experience of working with criminals
Crime
Crime is the breach of rules or laws for which some governing authority can ultimately prescribe a conviction...
and the mentally ill.
The book was described by The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, as a "an engaging rant against the folly, claptrap, self-indulgence and hypocrisy of mankind" and "Dalrymple's case is that the substitution of crude emotion for dispassionate analysis of public issues, and the mentality which demands exaggerated and public outpourings of mawkish sentimentality at critical moments, has distorted the values of public life", while The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
commented that the "breeze of cynicism wafts like an acrid rebuke through these tersely opinionated pages. It fans the flames of indignation, warming the cockles of unreconstructed reactionaries' hearts".
Background
Before the book's publication, Dalrymple had alluded on a number of occasions in his writing to the issue of sentimentality in contemporary society.In an essay in 1999, he identified what he saw as the harmful role played by sentimentality in a case involving Stephen Lawrence. Dalrymple wrote that "the response to the Stephen Lawrence case is another example of how the rule of law is to be supplanted by the rule of sentiment—and it is yet one more instance of what one might call the Dianafication of British public life, in which transitory popular enthusiasm trumps venerable tradition". In a 2004 essay, he analysed how sentimentality towards children was closely linked with violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
and neglect
Neglect
Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care....
, particularly in the poorest sections of British society
Underclass
The term underclass refers to a segment of the population that occupies the lowest possible position in a class hierarchy, below the core body of the working class. The general idea that a class system includes a population under the working class has a long tradition in the social sciences...
: "The upbringing of children in much of Britain is a witches' brew of sentimentality, brutality, and neglect, in which overindulgence in the latest fashions, toys, or clothes, and a television in the bedroom are regarded as the highest—indeed only—manifestations of tender concern for a child's welfare".
Before the book's publication, Dalrymple analysed two high-profile cases in the British media
Media of the United Kingdom
Media of the United Kingdom consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web sites. The UK also has a strong music industry. The UK has a diverse range of providers, the most prominent being principle public service...
involving Raoul Moat
2010 Northumbria Police manhunt
-Birtley shootings:Moat was released from Durham prison on 1 July, and allegedly arrived in the early hours of 3 July 2010 at a house in Birtley where Stobbart and her new partner – 29-year-old karate instructor, Chris Brown – were visiting. Brown had moved to the area from Windsor,...
and Jon Venables.
Dalrymple described Moat as "a brutal sentimentalist. He used the extremity of his behaviour to persuade himself that he felt something—supposedly love—very deeply, and that this was the motive and justification of his behaviour". Referring to Venables, Dalrymple wrote, "Probation officers persistently refused to see the writing on Venables's wall. They explained away the obvious signs of his continuing bad character. Just a little more kindness, understanding. What contempt he must have felt! Thus sentimentality, a refusal to face unpleasant realities, causes crime".
Chapter One: Sentimentality
Bandwagon effect
The bandwagon effect is a well documented form of groupthink in behavioral science and has many applications. The general rule is that conduct or beliefs spread among people, as fads and trends clearly do, with "the probability of any individual adopting it increasing with the proportion who have...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. He then analyses falling education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...
standards in the country, and links these trends to "powerful intellectual currents" that "feed into the great Sargasso Sea
Sargasso Sea
The Sargasso Sea is a region in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by ocean currents. It is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream; on the north, by the North Atlantic Current; on the east, by the Canary Current; and on the south, by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current. This...
of modern sentimentality about children", and asserts that in this regard the ideas of the philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau and the psychologist Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker is a Canadian-American experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist and popular science author...
have been particularly influential. He then examines a newspaper article urging reform
Reform
Reform means to put or change into an improved form or condition; to amend or improve by change of color or removal of faults or abuses, beneficial change, more specifically, reversion to a pure original state, to repair, restore or to correct....
of the British prison system
Her Majesty's Prison Service
Her Majesty's Prison Service is a part of the National Offender Management Service of the Government of the United Kingdom tasked with managing most of the prisons within England and Wales...
. Dalrymple states that the article aroused an emotion "whose effect, if not its intention, was to convince the person experiencing it that he was a person of superior sensibility and compassion", and that such emotionality "often attaches to the question of crime and punishment in contemporary Britain". Dalrymple also cites a modern tendency for criminals under the influence of drugs
DRUGS
Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows are an American post-hardcore band formed in 2010. They released their debut self-titled album on February 22, 2011.- Formation :...
or alcohol
Alcohol
In chemistry, an alcohol is an organic compound in which the hydroxy functional group is bound to a carbon atom. In particular, this carbon center should be saturated, having single bonds to three other atoms....
to not be held morally responsible
Moral responsibility
Moral responsibility usually refers to the idea that a person has moral obligations in certain situations. Disobeying moral obligations, then, becomes grounds for justified punishment. Deciding what justifies punishment, if anything, is a principle concern of ethics.People who have moral...
for their crimes. Dalrymple takes issue with this, and agrees with Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
that a man is doubly culpable: first for the offense committed, and second for having intoxicated himself. Dalrymple also maintains that it is "the sheerest sentimentality to see drug addicts as the victims of an illness" and that, "sentimentality is now a mass phenomenon almost beyond criticism or even comment".
Chapter Two: What is Sentimentality?
Dalrymple advances that the kind of sentimentality that he wishes to draw attention to is "an excess of emotion that is false, mawkish, and over-valued by comparison with reason" and which is performed "in full public view". Dalrymple contends that "Sentimentality is the expression of emotion without judgment. Perhaps it is worse than that: it is the expression of emotion without an acknowledgement that judgment should enter into how we should react to what we see and hear. It is the manifestation of a desire for the abrogation of an existential condition of human life, namely the need to always and never unendingly to exercise judgment. Sentimentality is therefore childish and reductive of our humanity". In this chapter he also takes issue with a number of assertions made by the philosopher Robert C. SolomonRobert C. Solomon
Robert C. Solomon was a professor of continental philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin in the USA.-Early life:...
, including that sentimentality does not manipulate
Psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
emotions, cause false emotions to be shown, or distort perception and interfere with rational thought.
Chapter Three: The Family Impact Statement
Dalrymple criticises the introduction by Harriet HarmanHarriet Harman
Harriet Ruth Harman QC is a British Labour Party politician, who is the Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham, and was MP for the predecessorPeckham constituency from 1982 to 1997...
of the Family Impact Statement
Victim impact statement
A victim impact statement is a written or oral statement made as part of the judicial legal process, which allows a victim of crime the opportunity to speak during the sentencing of their attacker or at subsequent parole hearings. In some instances videotaped statements are...
. Dalrymple writes that such statements "are not permitted to influence the outcome of a case. They are made only after a jury has made its verdict".. As a result, kitsch displays of emotion are encouraged in court, of no practical benefit.
Chapter Four: The Demand for Public Emotion
Dalrymple analyses the media attention and reaction to the disappearance of Madeleine McCannDisappearance of Madeleine McCann
Madeleine McCann disappeared on the evening of Thursday, 3 May 2007. She was on holiday with her parents and twin siblings in the Algarve region of Portugal. The British girl went missing from an apartment, in the central area of the resort of Praia da Luz, a few days before her fourth...
, and how certain media interpreted the lack of emotion from the girl’s parents as evidence of guilt. Dalrymple writes that the "demand that emotion should be shown in public, or be assumed not to exist and therefore indicate a guilty mind, is now not an uncommon one", and cites two similar cases involving Joanne Lees
Joanne Lees
Joanne Rachael Lees is a British woman who is most notable for being the girlfriend of Peter Falconio at the time of his murder on a remote stretch of highway near Barrow Creek in outback Northern Territory, Australia on 14 July 2001...
and Lindy Chamberlain
Azaria Chamberlain disappearance
Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain was a nine-week-old Australian baby girl, who disappeared on the night of 17 August 1980 on a camping trip to Uluru with her family. Her body was never found. Her parents, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, reported that she had been taken from their tent by a dingo...
. Dalrymple then analyses the outcry from the public and the media to the lack of emotion shown by the Queen after the death of Princess Diana, and contends that "the tabloid newspapers carried out what can only be called a campaign of bullying against the sovereign" and that those gathered outside Buckingham Palace were "bullying rather than expressing any genuine grief". He concludes by asserting that the sentimentality shown by both the media and the public “was inherently dishonest in a way that parallels the dishonesty that lies behind much sentimentality itself".
Chapter Five: The Cult of the Victim
Dalrymple analyses the poet Sylvia PlathSylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
, whom he describes as the "patron saint of self-dramatization", and interprets Margaret Drabble's descriptions of Plath as a "willing casualty" and "supremely vulnerable" to mean "virtues of a high order". He then examines how Plath blamed her father for her suffering, and identifies him in her poem "Daddy"
Daddy (poem)
"Daddy" is a poem written by American poet Sylvia Plath. It was written on October 12, 1962, shortly before her death, and published posthumously in Ariel in 1965. The poem's implications and thematic concerns have been discussed academically with differing conclusions...
with Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
and makes allusions to the holocaust. Dalrymple writes that "Plath felt it right to allude to one of the worst and most deliberate inflictions of mass-suffering in the whole of human history, merely on the basis that her father, who died when she was young, was German…the metaphorical use of the holocaust measures not the scale of her suffering, but of her self-pity
Self-pity
Self-pity is the psychological state of mind of an individual in perceived adverse situations who has not accepted the situation and does not have the confidence nor ability to cope with it. It is characterized by a person's belief that he or she is the victim of events and is therefore deserving...
". He asserts that before Plath, self-pity "was regarded as a vice, even a disgusting one, that precluded sympathy", and that "the appropriation of the suffering of others to boost the scale and significance of one's own suffering is now a commonplace." He then analyses a number of figures, including Binjamin Wilkomirski
Binjamin Wilkomirski
Binjamin Wilkomirski was a name which Bruno Dössekker adopted in his constructed identity as a Holocaust survivor and published author...
and Margaret Seltzer
Margaret Seltzer
Margaret Seltzer is an American writer. Her first book, Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival , about her alleged experiences growing up as a half white, half Native American foster child and Bloods gang member in South Central Los Angeles, was proven to be fictitious...
, who he alleges "make bogus claims to victim status" and whose stories reveal perfectly "the dialectic between sentimentality and brutality". Dalrymple ends the chapter by analysing victimhood
Victim playing
Victim playing is the fabrication of victim-hood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy or attention seeking.-By abusers:...
in the criminal justice
Criminal justice
Criminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
system and concludes, "For the sentimentalist, of course, there is no such thing as a criminal, only an environment that has let him down".
Chapter Six: Make Poverty History!
Chronic poverty
Chronic poverty is a term used to describe poverty with an extended duration. Both the implicit poverty line and the duration needed to allow such a classification are arbitrary and debated...
has decreased in the past twenty-five years, but mainly in China and India. As a result, "Africa is an exception and therefore is the current focus of sentimentality about poverty". In this context he examines Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
's desire as prime minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
to ensure that every child in Africa receive a primary education. Dalrymple questions whether there is a link between improving educational standards and increasing economic growth in the continent, and cites the experience of Tanzania
Tanzania
The United Republic of Tanzania is a country in East Africa bordered by Kenya and Uganda to the north, Rwanda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the west, and Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique to the south. The country's eastern borders lie on the Indian Ocean.Tanzania is a state...
under Julius Nyerere
Julius Nyerere
Julius Kambarage Nyerere was a Tanzanian politician who served as the first President of Tanzania and previously Tanganyika, from the country's founding in 1961 until his retirement in 1985....
, Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea
Equatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea where the capital Malabo is situated.Annobón is the southernmost island of Equatorial Guinea and is situated just south of the equator. Bioko island is the northernmost point of Equatorial Guinea. Between the two islands and to the...
under Macias Nguema
Francisco Macías Nguema
Francisco Macías Nguema was the first President of Equatorial Guinea, from 1968 until his overthrow in 1979.-Rise to power:...
, and Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone , officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest. Sierra Leone covers a total area of and has an estimated population between 5.4 and 6.4...
's fate after a "long history of historical effort and achievement" as evidence that this may not be so, and argues that Africa's priority is access to markets. Dalrymple concludes that Brown's position is pure sentimental posturing and smacks of "Singerian
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...
moral universalism", which is "preposterous—psychologically, theoretically, and practically".
In the book's Conclusion, Dalrymple contends that "in field after field, sentimentality has triumphed", and this has had a number of negative consequences, including the lives of millions of children being blighted by overindulgence and neglect
Neglect
Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care....
; the destruction of educational standards; and brutality
Battery (crime)
Battery is a criminal offense involving unlawful physical contact, distinct from assault which is the fear of such contact.In the United States, criminal battery, or simply battery, is the use of force against another, resulting in harmful or offensive contact...
wherever policies suggested by sentimentality have been advocated.
Release details
The book was originally published in the UK in hardbackHardcover
A hardcover, hardback or hardbound is a book bound with rigid protective covers...
on 29 July 2010 by Gibson Square Books Ltd. The book had at least one alternative sub-title before The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality was finally chosen, and the US edition had the sub-title How Britain is Ruined by Its Children. The book's front cover featured a wrongly attributed comment, "a taboo-shattering, sacred cow-slaughtering, myth-destroying little gem of a book" by Dominic Lawson
Dominic Lawson
Dominic Ralph Campden Lawson is a British journalist.-Background:Educated at Westminster School and then Christ Church, Oxford, he is the elder son of a former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson and socialite Vanessa Salmon, heir to the Lyons Corner House empire, who died of...
; Lawson had in fact written this in 2007 in a review of another Dalrymple US-published book, Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy. The paperback
Paperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
edition of Spoilt Rotten appeared in the UK on 11 August 2011.
Critical reception
After it was released the book received a mostly positive response in the media.In The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, Jonathan Sumption
Jonathan Sumption
Jonathan Philip Chadwick Sumption, OBE, QC is a UK barrister and medieval historian. On 4 May 2011 it was announced that he had been appointed to the United Kingdom Supreme Court, to be sworn in at a date agreed between him and Lord Phillips, President of the Supreme Court.He is known for his...
praised the book, writing "The public hysteria surrounding such high-profile incidents as the death of the Princess of Wales and the search for Madeleine McCann, or the eccentricities of the MacPherson report on the death of Stephen Lawrence are analysed with the author's customary mixture of shrewdness, cynicism and misanthropic pessimism. These phenomena have of course been analysed before, and many of the same points have been made. But Dalrymple is good at relating them to broader trends in our society". The book was described by Toby Young
Toby Young
Toby Young, MA, FRSA is a British journalist and the author of How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, the tale of his stint in New York as a contributing editor at Vanity Fair magazine...
in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
as being an "excellent new book attacking the cult of sentimentality" and that Dalrymple also "makes a convincing case that standards in British education have plummeted in the last few decades". Young also reviewed the book on his blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...
No Sacred Cows, where he wrote, "...the remarkable thing about Spoilt Rotten is that Dalrymple never lets his anger obscure his compassion. Throughout the book you get a powerful sense that his outrage is rooted in a commitment to social justice. Yes, he believes members of the underclass should be weaned off the nanny state and forced to take responsibility for themselves, but he also believes it is left-wing intellectuals who have reduced them to a state of helpless infantalism, mainly through the promotion of the cult of sentimentality. He is not a Christian, but believes that it is only when Britain's benefit dependents rediscover the doctrine of Original Sin that they will be able to help themselves". Also in The Daily Telegraph, Ed West gave the book a favourable review, writing "Sentimentality, in which crude emotion replaces dispassionate analysis, affects all aspects of public life, such as the debates over education, prison places and overseas aid. As Dalrymple points out, no country has ever escaped poverty via international aid—but never mind, since what matters is not actually doing anything about state education or crime or Africa, but being seen to be caring about the 'vulnerable'". The book was listed as a non-fiction choice by Steven Poole
Steven Poole
-Biography:Poole studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has subsequently written for publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sunday Times, and the New Statesman...
in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, who wrote, "Dalrymple alternates vague ranting with surgical demolition (he is excellent on the fatuity of 'family impact statements' in court), and exhibits impressive thrift, in these uncertain times, with his research, getting tens of pages out of a single visit to WHSmith and the purchase of two newspapers. Perhaps the most suggestive sentence is tucked away in an endnote about tattoos: 'I wish I had the space to elaborate on the dermatological semiotics of violence in England'. If only someone had awarded him that space". The book was also the subject of a spoof
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
review by John Crace
John Crace (writer)
John Crace is a British journalist writing for The Guardian.Crace is probably best known for his "The Digested Read" column, in which he reviews new fiction by condensing it into short narratives of about 700 words in the style of the book itself...
in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, which satirised the book and its author. The book was chosen by Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde
Jasper Fforde is a British novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer...
on the Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
website as one of the books he would most like to get for Christmas. Fforde wrote that the book, "makes uneasy reading for huggy liberals, and asks harsh questions over the bizarre sense of sentimentality that seems to have befuddled us Brits ever since millions of us queued up to sign a book of condolences for a princess we didn't know. Dalrymple looks at the downside of an overblown sense of sentiment, which resulted this year with a murderous thug who saw himself as a victim and found 32,000 people agreeing with him, and even opening a tribute Facebook page in his posthumous honor". Spoilt Rotten also made Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a libertarian perspective...
's list of Christmas books for 2010. In a positive review in The Scotsman
The Scotsman
The Scotsman is a British newspaper, published in Edinburgh.As of August 2011 it had an audited circulation of 38,423, down from about 100,000 in the 1980s....
, Tom Adair wrote, "Dalrymple tackles sentimentality on every front. He is frequently witty, always punchy and sometimes rapier-like, as he analyses the 'bunk' of his opponents to within an inch of its cant". In the Daily Express
Daily Express
The Daily Express switched from broadsheet to tabloid in 1977 and was bought by the construction company Trafalgar House in the same year. Its publishing company, Beaverbrook Newspapers, was renamed Express Newspapers...
, Neil Hamilton
Neil Hamilton (politician)
Mostyn Neil Hamilton is a former British barrister, teacher and Conservative MP. Since losing his seat in 1997 and leaving politics, Hamilton and his wife Christine have become media celebrities...
reviewed the book positively, writing, "Theodore Dalrymple's excellent Spoilt Rotten offers some thought-provoking insights and explains how emotional constipation in our national psyche has become emotional diarrhoea".
In a negative review in The Sunday Telegraph, historian Noel Malcolm
Noel Malcolm
Noel Robert Malcolm FBA FRSL is a modern English historian, writer, and columnist.-Life:Malcolm was educated at Eton College , read History at Peterhouse, Cambridge, wrote his doctorate dissertation at Trinity College, Cambridge, and was for a time Fellow of Gonville and Caius College,...
suggested that Dalrymple "is spreading his net too widely, so that 'sentimentality' comes to stand for any moralising view that does not satisfy his own scrutiny; it's not that these things should not be criticised, merely that sentimentalism may not be the key to what is wrong with them". Malcolm also questioned Dalrymple's views on modern educational theory, writing "these ideas have long and complex histories, in which sentimentalism is only part of the story. The 'progressive' attack on discipline, and on traditional institutions such as the family, was concerned as much with power-structures and class as it ever was with sentiment or human goodness", and took issue with Dalrymple's assessment of Rousseau. In a short negative review of the book in The Independent on Sunday, which appeared after the book's 2011 paperback release, Brandon Robshaw wrote, "There is some good sense here, but it's vitiated by the pompous, peevish tone, the futile nostalgia for an airbrushed past, unnecessary sideswipes (at John Rawls, for example, or climate science) and by the poor editing". In an ambivalent review on the website MercatorNet
MercatorNet
MercatorNet is a magazine operating out of Sydney, Australia and has been online since 2004. Its focus is parenting/family issues, bioethics, religion, philosophy and entertainment...
, Francis Phillips wrote "The book leaves one with the impression that it is a somewhat hotchpotch compendium of views and articles already well rehearsed by the author—though nonetheless true for all that. What is disheartening is his bleak attitude towards human nature; having diagnosed the disease he is at a loss to suggest a remedy".
See also
- VictimologyVictimologyVictimology is the scientific study of victimization, including the relationships between victims and offenders, the interactions between victims and the criminal justice system — that is, the police and courts, and corrections officials — and the connections between victims and other social groups...
- Victim playingVictim playingVictim playing is the fabrication of victim-hood for a variety of reasons such as to justify abuse of others, to manipulate others, a coping strategy or attention seeking.-By abusers:...
- Media manipulationMedia manipulationMedia manipulation is an aspect of public relations in which partisans create an image or argument that favours their particular interests. Such tactics may include the use of logical fallacies and propaganda techniques, and often involve the suppression of information or points of view by crowding...
- Sentimentalism (literature)Sentimentalism (literature)Sentimentalism , as a literary and political discourse, has occurred much in the literary traditions of all regions in the world, and is central to the traditions of Indian literature, Chinese literature, and Vietnamese literature...
- KitschKitschKitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
- Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the MassesOur Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the MassesOur Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses is a 2005 non-fiction book by British physician and writer Theodore Dalrymple. It is composed of twenty-six separate pieces that cover a wide range of topics from drug legalization to the influence of Shakespeare...
External links
- http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/all/6157713/prison-may-not-work-for-them-but-it-works-for-us.thtml Dalrymple article in The Spectator examining the role of sentimentality, and the perceived harm it causes, in the criminal justice system
- http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/theodore-dalrymple-denunciation-ceremonies-for-absent-fathers-cant-be-far-off-2299959.html 2011 Dalrymple article in The Independent, examining sentimentality in the statements of current Prime Minister David CameronDavid CameronDavid William Donald Cameron is the current Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and Leader of the Conservative Party. Cameron represents Witney as its Member of Parliament ....