The John Ralston Saul post has just reminded me to have a rant about a phrase that seems to have become increasingly common in usage amongst young adults/ twentysomethings...
On Good Form
A "I saw B today."
C "Oh yeah, how was she?"
A "Yeah, she was on good form."
This is an exchange I hear far too often, and it honestly makes me wince. I think that there are several things going on here, some more universalisable than others.
Social acceptability by appeal to a fashionable and recognisable term
Examples of this include:
Rock up as a synonym for arrive
Take it easy as a way of saying goodbye
Kip over as a synonym for stay/ sleep over (verb)
I'm certainly not immune to this type of behaviour, but at least I know what's going on. Luckily some of my friends will pick me up on this and mock me accordingly...
Bite-size summation
Closely linked to CM's theory of the one-sentence summary i.e. that we are all afforded a single phrase by each other which can be given as a response to the question, "What's B like?" (the most bland of which would presumably include the word nice. I hope I'm never described as nice in other people's one-sentence summaries).
Where the one-sentence summary is pretty static, often frustratingly so if you feel somebody has you all wrong, the bite-size summation has the potential to be far more dynamic. Most importantly though, its scope is often limited to a shallow inference by its subject: "She made a couple of funny jokes so she must be happy"; "He didn't say very much so he must have things on his mind"; "She scrutinised the bill so she must be uptight". What makes you so sure? Did you ask how she was really doing? Have we lost the ability to communicate?
People as a means to an end
I think that many people are generally uncomfortable with other people's problems and unhappiness (or should I say discontentment). I also think that this is largely because first, many people are so afraid of consciousness and responsibility that they would rather suffocate their minds with material distraction to avoid the possibility of contemplation on this kind of level (I'd like to thank the Academy... and Pascal...), and second, as pointed out by Mr. Saul, people now see the pursuit of mindless and selfish hedonism as a god-given right: tales of woe are seen as a pollutant.
By saying that B is on good form, you give the public exactly what they want.
Tuesday, April 11, 2006
A Cigar Called Hamlet
Happiness
A tired and twisted notion which has become an increasing embarrassment in a confused society.
Happiness rose to great social and political prominence in the eighteenth century, when it was used by most European philosophers as one of the essential qualities of a reformed society. It was legally consecrated at the highest possible level by Jefferson who, in the American Declaration of Independence, made it one of the citizen's three inalienable rights: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Thanks to its philosophical and legal position, happiness has stayed at the forefront of social and policital policy throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, the meaning of the word has gradually changed.
Its Aristotelain sense was spiritual harmony. But Aristotle was the justifying genius of the Scholastics* and spiritual harmony was one of the concepts which helped them to maintain a state of intellectual and social stagnation. It was no accident that the Enlightenment's attack on scholasticism included the reorienting of this word to give human harmony a more practical, active meaning. As a result, in the eighteenth century happiness came to include basic material comfort in a prosperous, well-organised society. As the Western upper-middle and solid middle classes gradually accomplished this for themselves, the word's meaning declined into the pursuit of personal pleasure or an obscure sense of inner contentment. Both the spiritual and the necessary material were forgotten. Few writers and public figures have dared to point this out or suggest that, since the meaning of the word has changed, it no longer needs to be treated as a question of primary importance.
President de Gaulle responded to pressure from his ministers to give in to policies which might be popular in the short run, but were fundameneally damaging, by retorting that "happiness is for idiots." He wasn't proposing unhappiness or a loss of material comfort. Much of his time in power was spent creating social services and prosperity. Rather he was protesting the confusion of happiness with a state of mindless contentment. He was arguing against happiness and in favour of consciousness which, the world being what it really is, might not involve contentment, but would involve Reponsibility*.
Nothing has happened in the last quarter-century to clarify this confusion. As economic and social conditions have gradually sunk, happiness, with its twisted meaning at the ethical and legal centre of our society, has seemed increasingly lugubrious and out of place. In a more practical world, there would be a formal process for retiring a word from active use until it finds itself again.
John Ralston Saul - The Doubter's Companion (A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense)
* Denotes a term that is qualified (i.e. satirised) elsewhere in the book.
A tired and twisted notion which has become an increasing embarrassment in a confused society.
Happiness rose to great social and political prominence in the eighteenth century, when it was used by most European philosophers as one of the essential qualities of a reformed society. It was legally consecrated at the highest possible level by Jefferson who, in the American Declaration of Independence, made it one of the citizen's three inalienable rights: "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Thanks to its philosophical and legal position, happiness has stayed at the forefront of social and policital policy throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, the meaning of the word has gradually changed.
Its Aristotelain sense was spiritual harmony. But Aristotle was the justifying genius of the Scholastics* and spiritual harmony was one of the concepts which helped them to maintain a state of intellectual and social stagnation. It was no accident that the Enlightenment's attack on scholasticism included the reorienting of this word to give human harmony a more practical, active meaning. As a result, in the eighteenth century happiness came to include basic material comfort in a prosperous, well-organised society. As the Western upper-middle and solid middle classes gradually accomplished this for themselves, the word's meaning declined into the pursuit of personal pleasure or an obscure sense of inner contentment. Both the spiritual and the necessary material were forgotten. Few writers and public figures have dared to point this out or suggest that, since the meaning of the word has changed, it no longer needs to be treated as a question of primary importance.
President de Gaulle responded to pressure from his ministers to give in to policies which might be popular in the short run, but were fundameneally damaging, by retorting that "happiness is for idiots." He wasn't proposing unhappiness or a loss of material comfort. Much of his time in power was spent creating social services and prosperity. Rather he was protesting the confusion of happiness with a state of mindless contentment. He was arguing against happiness and in favour of consciousness which, the world being what it really is, might not involve contentment, but would involve Reponsibility*.
Nothing has happened in the last quarter-century to clarify this confusion. As economic and social conditions have gradually sunk, happiness, with its twisted meaning at the ethical and legal centre of our society, has seemed increasingly lugubrious and out of place. In a more practical world, there would be a formal process for retiring a word from active use until it finds itself again.
John Ralston Saul - The Doubter's Companion (A Dictionary of Aggressive Common Sense)
* Denotes a term that is qualified (i.e. satirised) elsewhere in the book.