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Autor: Little, Joyce Buch: The Church and the Culture War Titel: The Church and the Culture War Stichwort: Moderne Geisteshaltung des "sowohl als auch" (both/and); Sentimentalismus (Chesterton) Kurzinhalt: The desire to have "both/and", rather than to face up to the inescapable "either/or"s of life, has left its mark everywhere... The refusal to make such commitments is frequently presented as a form of freedom, since it always allows one to do as one ... Textausschnitt: "BOTH/AND"
12a Ours is a sentimental age. That is to say, ours is an age of emotional self-indulgence. As G. K. Chesterton notes,
The sin of sentimentalism only occurs when somebody indulges a feeling, sometimes even a real feeling, at the prejudice of something equally real, which also has its rights. The most common form of this dishonesty is what is called "having it both ways." I have always felt it in the conventionalized laxity of fashionable divorce, where people want to change their partners as rapidly as at a dance, and yet want again and again to thrill at the heroic finality of the sacramental vow, which is like the sound of a trumpet. They want to eat their wedding cake and have it.1
12b The desire to have "both/and", rather than to face up to the inescapable "either/or"s of life, has left its mark everywhere. Nowhere is this more apparent, as Chesterton points out, than in marriage, where the ability to experience the thrill of the romance of an irrevocable commitment 'til death do us part is not thought to be incompatible with the ability to experience the relief that comes from being done with the relationship once the first blush is off the rose, not to mention being able to experience the thrill of the irrevocable commitment all over again. The notion that one ought either live out the relationship to which one has pledged oneself or not enter into such a relationship at all seems, to modern minds, a harsh and dreadful judgment capable of being enunciated only by cold, uncaring people. As a result, today's inclusive mentality has turned the whole sexual landscape into a hodgepodge of premarital, extramarital, postmarital, heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, sado-masochistic, multipartnered or serially monogamous promiscuity. No one type of sexual activity seems to preclude others, and no state of life seems to preclude sexual activity. (Fs) (notabene)
13a The greatest casualty of this "both/and" mentality is the irrevocable commitment, the decision to do one thing or to enter into one relationship to the exclusion of other things or relationships. The refusal to make such commitments is frequently presented as a form of freedom, since it always allows one to do as one likes rather than requiring one to do what one has promised. And this freedom is defended on grounds that people change and cannot therefore reasonably be expected to maintain any long-term commitments. But this new liberation is rather alarming in what it suggests about people today. To cite Chesterton again,
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time and place. The danger of it is that he himself should not keep the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea. In other words, he fears that by that time he will be, in the common but hideously significant phrase, another man. Now, it is this horrible fairy tale of a man constantly changing into other men that is the soul of the decadence.2 ____________________________
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