Sentimentality/tenderness and the gas chamber.

Yesterday, I linked to "'Empathetically Correct' Is the New Politically Correct/The movement for 'trigger warnings' in college classrooms is part of a troubling trend toward protecting people from their own individual sensitivities," an Atlantic article by Karen Swallow Prior, who paraphrased Flannery O’Connor as "famously" saying "that sentimentality always leads to the gas chamber." Always?! I thought that was interesting though puzzling and used it in my headline.

Tamara Tabo emailed: 

I am not sure whether this will make you smile, cringe, roll your eyes, or simply click delete . . . .

I have worn my affection for Flannery O'Connor on my sleeve, so to speak, for about 13 years. This version of the quote comes from Walker Percy who lovingly purloined it from Flannery for use in his novel The Thanatos Syndrome.

Here's her photo:



Wow. Great picture. I can't imagine putting the words "gas chambers" on my body, but I wouldn't get any tattoo, and perhaps — given the use of tattoos by the Nazis — an argument against what they represent is the first or only acceptable tattoo. 

But why is opposition to tenderness an argument against what Nazis represent? And what's with the 2 versions of the aphorism? What meaning is there in the shift from sentimentality to tenderness? And how closely do the thoughts of Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy connect to present-day debates about empathy and trigger warnings?

MORE: In fact, O'Connor, like Percy, used the word "tenderness." She wrote:

"Flannery O’Connor — a writer whose works are rife with warning label-worthy violence — famously said that sentimentality always leads to the gas chamber."

"Without any external anchor in law, mores, or trusted guides — or any openness to being challenged in one’s thinking — empathy turned inward will lead each of us to our individual prisons of the self."

That's the last paragraph of "'Empathetically Correct' Is the New Politically Correct/The movement for 'trigger warnings' in college classrooms is part of a troubling trend toward protecting people from their own individual sensitivities," by Karen Swallow Prior in The Atlantic.

Prior links to this New Yorker article from last year by Paul Bloom called "The Baby in the Well/The Case Against Empathy." Excerpt:

A “politics of empathy” doesn’t provide much clarity in the public sphere, either. Typically, political disputes involve a disagreement over whom we should empathize with....