`Vaporous and Sentimental'

On Sunday, under duress, I found myself in the company of people who mistake being nice for being good. The former is easy and accompanied by self-congratulation; the latter, difficult and often accompanied by regret. I was expected to share with them certain social and political assumptions—some of which I do, though I’ll be damned if I’d let them know it -- and to approve of their collective efforts to convince themselves they are virtuous and happy. The smugness of the militantly nice! To make matters worse, many were doctors and lawyers. I thought of Flannery O’Connor, who said modern religious feeling had become “if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.” And I remembered this from her story “The Enduring Chill”:

“When people think they are smart - even when they are smart - there is nothing anybody else can say to make them see things straight, and with Asbury, the trouble was that in addition to being smart, he had an artistic temperament. She did not know where he had got it from because his father, who was a lawyer and businessman and farmer and politician all rolled into one, had certainly had his feet on the ground; and she had certainly always had hers on it. She had managed after he died to get the two of them through college and beyond; but she had observed that the more education they got, the less they could do. Their father had gone to a one-room schoolhouse through the eighth grade and he could do anything.”