A Word for Communal Warmth

Gezelligheid • noun • (yuh-sell-i-height)

Definition: convivial coziness; the warmth you feel from being in community with others.

Origin: Dutch

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Using language to empower people and enlighten their understanding of the world is a key aspect of this newsletter, yet due to America’s ethnocidal society The Word also has another equally important function.

Foreign languages provide all of us with a glimpse of how other societies have chosen to articulate and define the world around them. Through speaking their words, we can develop a greater capacity to understand the world through their eyes, and now our understanding of the world, including our own home, will have a greater texture, nuance, and wisdom.

Ethnocide sustains itself by parasitically destroying culture, therefore an ethnocidal society is ill-equipped at creating the nurturing, sustainable language that has been the bedrock of civilization. An ethnocidal society is more prone to creating a word or a phrase to celebrate the destruction of nurturing, sustainable language.

Due to this linguistic absence, SCL also focuses on finding words from other languages that can fill our ethnocidal linguistic void. Such a task can be tricky because more often than not these nurturing, sustainable words are difficult to translate.

At SCL, we believe that culture has an inherent connection to place, and because of this a culture’s language will be very specific to place. Therefore some of a culture’s words will struggle to survive or be understood in a different environment that would not necessitate the creation of a similar word. The sustainable practices created by a culture of people in a cold, mountainous environment will be completely different than those of a people in a warm environment next to a beach. Both cultures would create vastly different words and phrases for their sustainable practices due to their environment, and it would be hard to comprehend and apply each one’s practices in a different environment.

Ethnocide does not value sustainable practices, so an ethnocidal society both lacks the language and struggles to understand the untranslatable sustainable practices of another society. 

Gezelligheid is one of these untranslatable words, and the sooner we understand the spirit, or geist, of the word the better we will be at combatting ethnocide.

Gezelligheid, Polderen, & Hygge

Gezelligheid is a Dutch word that loosely translates as “convivial coziness,” and many Dutch people consider it to be one of the determining factors of living in a happy society. The Dutch say gezelligheid and gezellig, which means “cozy,” all the time and use it to describe countless communal gatherings. Gezelligheid is getting coffee with friends, it’s having that coffee turn into an extended hangout with drinks because you enjoy each other’s presence so much. Gezelligheid can be found in gathering with friends around a fire, a communal meal and in many other social contexts. The prevalence of the word makes it hard to describe precisely what constitutes gezelligheid, and this in turn makes it even harder to translate.

Following the popularity of hygge—another nearly untranslatable word that is loosely defined as “cozy”—in the United States about five years ago, segments of America became interested in other northern European words that roughly mean “cozy,” and interest in gezelligheid grew, but it never became as popular at hygge. 

The reason for hygge’s success and gezelligheid’s obscurity has everything to do with a culture’s attachment to place, and America’s embrace of individualism.

Hygge is a Danish word, and Denmark is much colder than the Netherlands. “Cozy” in a cold environment looks much different than “cozy” in a warm, albeit rainy environment. Hygge can sometimes extend to communal gatherings and large meals with friends, but much of hygge consists of turning one’s home into a cozy environment. When the weather is cold and unforgiving, it becomes a cultural imperative to turn your home into a warm and nurturing environment. This is how a culture of people learn how to survive in the cold.

America’s ethnocidal culture of individualism quickly consumed hygge without understanding Danish culture and so it became a design and aesthetic fad. Americans could now buy hygge knick knacks to place in their homes, but without a cultural context to make coziness meaningful it remained elusive regardless of how much they bought hygge.

Gezelligheid, on the other hand, is not primarily located within one’s home and can extend to all walks of life, therefore it became much harder for America to create gezellig products. Without the products to consume, Americans struggled to understand the benefit of gezelligheid. Yet gezelligheid speaks to a profound cultural need that remains lacking in America, and the Dutch word polderen highlights the importance of coming together to create a cozy, happy society.

Polderen technically means “a culture of reclaiming and sustaining land,” but it is much more than that. Much of the Netherlands is below sea level, and a lot of the country exists because the Dutch used canals, dyks, and windmills to reclaim submerged land from the sea. The act of reclaiming land for the benefit of the entire community created a culture that encourages people to commune and work together to sustain their shared land.

Additionally, the Netherlands’ rainy weather means that a polder—the reclaimed land—could get swallowed up by the sea due to a faulty dam or a heavy storm, so for over a century it has been a cultural imperative for Dutch people to put aside their differences in order to preserve their land. The environment has helped shape tolerant people who are prone to communing with each other, so it is logical that their application of “coziness” would have a greater connection to creating coziness amongst your friends and community within the land that you all work together to sustain.

As Americans work to transcend division and create an uplifting community of togetherness we can use the spirit of gezelligheid to help fill our linguistic and cultural void.

Creating & Not Pursuing Happiness

Another profound aspect of gezelligheid is its relationship to the concept of happiness. Gezelligheid helps make the Dutch happy people. This is not a happiness that they pursue. It is a happiness that they create.

In America, we have long been intoxicated by the pursuit of happiness ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote it in our Declaration of Independence, but the pursuit of happiness has disincentivized us from creating happiness.

Americans often articulate happiness as something they intend to seek out or find. Many Americans believe that if they commit themselves to working a job they hate, they will be able to earn enough money to buy the house, car, or whatever else they’ve decided they need to become happy. Tragically, they eventually come to learn that these material possessions do not provide them with happiness, and so their search for happiness starts over again.

We are told to pursue happiness, and many Americans become sad and depressed when they struggle to find it. It is a dystopian wild goose chase, and America’s ethnocidal society does not profess the importance of creating happiness.

Gezelligheid speaks to a culture’s commitment to creating happiness as an imperative for survival, and the importance of creating happiness through spending quality time with the people you love.

Gezelligheid could manifest as grabbing drinks with friends after work. It could be inviting people over to your home for dinner. It could be going to a concert with a friend, or having a nice walk and coffee with someone.

It can literally be almost any action, but it needs to be infused with a convivial or communal warmth. This is how you can create happiness at both a micro and a macro level. It is easier to cultivate a convivial warmth within our homes and towards our invited guests. It becomes more complicated to do so in a large public space where hundreds of people can collectively feel the warmth as they engage in various iterations of gezelligheid, but it is not impossible. The Dutch are also known for their cute, quaint villages that exude a warmth and happiness.

American ethnocide encourages Americans to embrace individualism and believe that safety resides within private spaces. We do not have the language for a communal social warmth or convivial coziness. America struggles to create, or find, happiness as we embrace our private individualism.

America’s environment is different than the Netherlands, so we cannot copy gezelligheid, but we should certainly embrace its spirit as we work to create a happier and warmer society.

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