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

Entry: TOWARDS A VIEW OF HISTORY FOR OUR OWN TIMES - A54973678
Author: Casseroleon - U11049737

I felt back in 1963 that Professor Plumb's "Crisis in the Humanities" was a very real one. History especially had given up its confident overview that saw Human development, like biological evolution, as story in which "Things can only get better". In fact in introducing his last volume of his History of Europe in the thirties H.A.L. Fisher wrote of "The Liberal Experiment" that the progress in human rights from the American Declaration of Independence in 1776 looked like being reversed as the World lurched towards totalitarianism as a remedy for the World Chaos of 1933.

It is not yet clear that we have escaped from another period of World Chaos sparked by a an economic and financial crisis reminiscent in scale of 1933; and Gordon Brown has said that there is "No road map".

There never is a road map for the future. But we can sometimes have some idea of where we are and how we got here, which is what Professor Plumb called "the social function" of History.

These are thoughts towards a view of the history that has brought us to where we are.

as a piece this is excellant but very lengthy - would it work is split into two pieces? I dont know how important it is to keep it intact.
Yours to ignore

nosebag

Thanks for your comment. It does have sub-sections- though the Hitch-Hiker format shrank my sub-headings so that they do not stand out. I would certainly recommend anyone reading it to take it in stages.

in which case this piece seems fine, i'll leave it to someone whos spelling is better than my own to check for that

Nosebagbear

Thanks again.. Is there any way of increasing the headings sizes? Or perhaps I should label part One Two etc..

But perhaps I should warn people, in case they think that I am being rude should anyone comment, that this has been a last minute step just before going off on holiday.

Cass

if you say it in a comment people should realise and a subbie should deal with it, enjoy your holiday

Thanks Nosebagbear

I hope to..

Hello Casseroleon, Welcome to PR!

I notice that you say you are about to go away for a holiday, so perhaps you may not read this until you return.

Nosebagbear was correct when he queried the length of this piece , it is so long I couldn't manage to copy and paste it into a document to count the words, but generally speaking anything over 2,000 words is considered lengthy. Perhaps if you take another look at the Writing Guidelines you will also notice that entries should not really be individual viewpoints or theses. ( however well written or argued)

I wonder if you would be able to redraft this piece in accordance with the guidelines? For instance a short piece just on the life and works of Ruskin, demonstrating his legacy to the modern era, would be one way to start; as there is nothing in the Edited Guide about him. Obviously you mention many other influential people, and it would be up to you as to how you proceed.

Looking forward to hearing your views when you return!

Over 20,000 words.

I blanched at the prospect of reading such a posting. Sorry.

And yet it's certainly worth the effort. It is however a 'view' of history. Does this meet the EG's function?

If it doesn't, could it be serialised for the Post or something? It 'should' be somewhere where it has a chance of being read IMO. I must admit, I haven't read to the end yet. It mentions people not always easily remembered by the non-history-buffs. Footnotes?

I suggest putting in some jokes about halfway through to se if people are paying attention
I would definently agree that it should be put somewhere important as it is an excellant piece, and clearly an awful lot of work has gone into it, as i am only about 1/3 of the way through i can't speak for all of it but i think it is a relativily impartial view, could be good for EG ?

nsb - The Edited Guide has to abide by the guidelines, ie factual *and* within a shorter word count than this.

I guessed as much which is why I thought of serialisation for the Post or something. Can you think of any other suitable place?

It is possible to still serialise it within the Edited Guide.

It requires further editing to remove the 'first person' references and change them to 'third person'.

I think all the parts will still need to be completed together so they are not disrupted. Hopefully it can then be put on the Front Page over a weekend, similar to a Uni Project.

Footnotes can be just as disruptive, so I would advise keeping them to a manageable level.

Also, we would need a very patient Sub-Editor *waves to Gnomon*


lil x

Thanks for the comments.. The piece was obviously not written with the EG guidelines in mind-- and as it was a last minute decision to submit it before going off on holiday- there was no time to rework it.

Like many of of the pieces of my own particular thought adventure over the last 12 months it had already been placed in the black hole of "My Space" lost in this particular universe.

I fear, however, that breaking it down into independent pieces( e.g. an entry on Ruskin) would kill it off in just the way that western thought has done with its analytical scientific method since the early seventeenth century.

The times call for joined-up and vital thinking not post-mortem analysis with the benefit of hindsight; and I posted the piece because I referred to it in responding to a front page article upon the immense challenges facing humanity. These challenges appear all the more massive because we no longer have belief systems that were encouraged by the great historians of the nineteenth century, with their obsessions with the State and then the economy-both of which reduce human beings into convenient standard sizes to fit in with the requirements of their machinery.

It seems that the Hitch-Hikers virtual Universe must be similarly reduced to a cosmology littered with comfortable Earth- or even moon sized- bodies.

Not so much Earth- or Moon-sized, but Human-Brain-sized. That's a lot to take in in one go.

Gnomon

Thanks for your reply..

As I had said previously, I did write the piece with headings that divide it into more manageable sections- and I would not expect someone to really read the whole thing in one sitting. Nevertheless as someone has just referred to the blessing of a whole book now being available to read on line, I think that we should not condemn the computer screen to the kind of dumbed-down thinking that seems to be so prevalent these days.

Unfortunately the pasting up shrank my divisions so they were less evident and helpful than I had intended.

If this is picked, the sub-editor can convert those titles into proper headers and sub-headers, which will make it easier to read. Don't worry about this.

What needs to be decided here is whether this is suitable as it is, and if not, what can be done to make it so.

lil wrote

>>It is possible to still serialise it within the Edited Guide.

...
I think all the parts will still need to be completed together so they are not disrupted. Hopefully it can then be put on the Front Page over a weekend, similar to a Uni Project.

...
Also, we would need a very patient Sub-Editor *waves to Gnomon* <<<


If this was made into a series, does it pass the criteria for being included? I am not a historian, so cannot judge whether this entry is a personal view, or an unbiased reflection of various arguments.