h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It struck me the other day reading Peyps ( http://www.pepysdiary.com/ ) just how old-fashioned words like "merriment" "mirth" "gaiety" and "joy" have become. Even "delight" is a little quaint.

We strive to be "happy" and will take "fulfilment" as a reasonable second best, but these are personal gratifications.

Why have we lost sight of the fleeting gifts of friendship and good company namely merriment, mirth, gaiety and joy?

B

Is it maybe because taking pleasure in something is 'wrong' in some way? Everything seems so puritanical these days..

A delight to see you anyway, Ben.

How interesting. To me it seems that we are selfishly hedonistic. Though of course the critical voices are indeed puritanical.

In my mind, the older words conjour up shared pleasures which might last an evening or so, certainly the first three do. Whereas happiness is a personal pleasure with the illusive promise of lasting longer. And I wondered if it might be to do with the way society is structured to value individuality more than community these days.

What do others think

B

We live in a mass society. More people live in towns and cities than in rural areas. Family and the extended family are becoming less and less relevant where people are directly connected to and dependent on the constructed institutions of the mass society [government, quangos, big business, media, multinational food and drink conglomerates, health services, welfare, legal services, workfare, labour markets ...]

Perhaps it's just the way vocabulary changes over time. To me those words conjure up an Austen novel or a Victorian Christmas - of their period.

I suspect their lack of use is also to do with the modern pursuit of possessions, status and power rather than personal indulgence & communal entertainment.

Yesterday's Tyrannosaurus Rex is today's chicken. Yesterday's face time is today's virtual reality. We don't gather together to drink punch and watch the bonfire, but we [some of us, at least] twitter and "like" this one or that. We're social creatures now, just as we were then, but a new vocabulary of virtual cues has replaced social cues and body language.

The last time I heard the word "merriment" was in Tom Lehrer's song "Poisoning Pigeons in the park:"



We'll murder them all amid laughter and merirment,
Except for the few we tare home to experiment."

"Gaiety" was used in the title of a Rodgers and Hart musical in the 1920s ["Garrick Gaieties"].

I've forgotten the other words on the list in post 1. "Gay" is now an indication of sexual orientation.

Things just---changed.

And yet at 'the end' of every Harry Potter film
there is merriment and joy and a delightful round
of applause or dancing.

We haven't lost these things; we just tend to extend
them into the safety of the 5th dimension along with
the violence and cruelties we can no longer bear
except in the reel whirled.


~jwf~

There was plenty of merriment, mirth, gaiety and joy in the pub Thursday night... Well the first two pubs we came to we couldn't even get in, there was so* much of it going on inside...

I agree that the words seem old fashioned, but if the last fortnight or so is anything to go by, the emotions connected with them are alive and rollicking.

I don't know about merriment, mirth, or gaiety - all those conjure up images of people partying, to me - but I've always had a theory about joy.

The reason joy is rare, I think, is that as a feeling, it's so risky. And even riskier if you try to share it.