Apropos of the Previous Post

Don't panic, it's just a quote and an observation.

My previous post (which already revealed my predilection for British humor) made me think of the following from the second episode of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio program (specifically the bolded part, which you can just read if you want to ignore the rest).

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy, lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-million miles is an utterly insignificant blue-green planet whose ape-descended lifeforms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem which was this: Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper… which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy… And so the problem remained. And lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable – even the ones with digital watches. Many were increasingly of the opinion that they all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans. And then one day, nearly two-thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl, sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth, suddenly realised what it was that had been going wrong all this time. And she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work! And no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and so the idea was lost forever. Meanwhile, Arthur Dent has escaped from the Earth in the company of a friend of his, who has unexpectedly turned out to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. His name is Ford Prefect – for reasons which are unlikely to become clear again at the moment. And they are both in dead trouble with the captain of a Vogon spaceship.

Short version: being nice to people is hard, as human history continues to teach us. And, for my own part, I think that too many self-described Christians worry way too much about salvation/the afterlife and imposing a specific view of morality on people and not nearly enough about loving one’s neighbor.

FILED UNDER: Entertainment, Humor, Popular Culture, Religion
Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter

Comments

  1. steve says:

    I know a number of people who I think are good Christians. People who make an effort to live up to the ideals spoken about in the Bible. They are truly good, decent people. I also know that at times it can be hard to live up to your own beliefs. I think we all have set of clay. That said, I think an awful lot of supposed Christians now are just cultural Christians without true belief. I also think that for too many people who may have been true Christians at one time they have let politics and tribal affiliation (or joining a cult, of personality) take priority over their faith.

    Many Christians used to be willing to be tossed to the lions before they would place an emperor before their savior. Now many, certainly the loudest, want to sic the lions on those would dare to even gently rebuke the emperor, who has now replaced their savior.

    Steve

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  2. just nutha says:

    @steve: Additionally, related to impose, is that the correct and Christian answer to “I don’t want to do what you said” is “okay, don’t.” The Amish get this in ways other Christians don’t

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  3. Gustopher says:

    @steve:

    Many Christians used to be willing to be tossed to the lions before they would place an emperor before their savior.

    I don’t know how willing they were. We only have very biased accounts from witnesses either wanting to say “see how noble they were to be martyred” and others wanting to say “see how noble we are, we gave them so many opportunities to not be thrown to the lions, but they kept rejecting them — it was really suicide by lion.”

    The only thing I think we know with any certainty is that St. Ignatius’s last words were “Psssss. Psss. Psss. Who’s a fluffy danger kitty?”

  4. Kathy says:

    duplicate post. sorry.

  5. Kathy says:

    @Gustopher:

    My reading of Roman history, and assorted related ones from the early centuries CE, suggest early Christian church leaders warned their members not to seek martyrdom.

    BTW, in early persecutions the demand was not quite to forsake their new religion, but to offer sacrifices to the gods, in particular the deified emperors.

    Given that latter developments resulted in what is, IMO, effectively polytheism, as well as mixing pagan religious practices into Christianity, I wonder if some kind of accommodation might have been found for pagan animal sacrifices in early Christianity. Jews at the time complied with cult of the Caesars by making offerings and sacrifices to Jehovah in the name of the dead emperors.

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  6. Jay L Gischer says:

    I am so happy that you transcribed this speech for the blog. It is easily my favorite speech of HHGTTG. (Though a close second begins, “space is big. Really big…”)

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  7. steve says:

    Gustopher- Yes. The Christians going to the lions has been questioned by some but my understanding is not that it never happened but rather that it didnt happen at the scale many believe and some persecution really did happen However, at a place filled with professional writers it seemed like the writerish kind of thing to write.

    Steve

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  8. @Jay L Gischer: I can’t take credit for the transcription–click through the link in the post and you will find all the radio show scripts.

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  9. Kathy says:

    @steve:

    Oh, the persecutions are well documented. Some were regional, some empire-wide, some emperors ignore Christians entirely, and so on. Sometimes the population at large went along, sometimes not.

    One of the earliest happened after the great fire where Nero was much criticized for his response to it. so he turned and blamed it on the Christians, and began a persecution. This didn’t go over well with the people who’d had their homes destroyed by fire*.

    Diocletian famously started one after a reading of entrails, I kid you not, didn’t go well. The man performing it could get nothing. He blamed it on the influence of Christians; somehow they were screwing up the world merely by existing (this seems awfully familiar).

    *Maybe gaslighting the populace was harder before the invention of gaslights.

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  10. Andy says:

    It’s one of the all-time great book series, IMO. It’s unfortunate that it’s never really translated well to the screen. Even though it’s well over four decades since I listened to the radio series, I still have fond memories of it.

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  11. Joe says:

    @Andy: I own a CD of the BBC version and my children have all heard it. I may need to dig it out again.

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  12. SC_Birdflyte says:

    @Kathy: The Neronian persecution also swept up a number of Jews in Rome who had been allowed to practice their faith as long as they offered sacrifices that included a blessing for the emperor.

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  13. @Andy: I was utterly infatuated with the radio series when I first discovered it and then thrilled when he wrote the books.

    Did you ever listen to the sequel radio series that were made many years later with the same case (except for Peter Jones as the Book, as he had passed)?

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  14. Joe says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: Now I have something to search for.

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  15. Andy says:

    @Steven L. Taylor:

    Did you ever listen to the sequel radio series that were made many years later with the same case (except for Peter Jones as the Book, as he had passed)?

    I have not, at least not that I can remember (and I think I would remember that). I will have to look it up, thanks!

  16. Jay L Gischer says:

    @Steven L. Taylor: I think you must be referring to the narrative that is formed around “Go See Zarniwoop”? Very enjoyable, yes.

    Years ago, you could get a CD set of the complete BBC recordings, which included this. Don’t know if you still can.

    Also, for what it’s worth, the film that came out with Martin Freeman as Arthur Dent was quite good. Much was changed around to fit, and Arthur became more of a middle-class everyman than an Oxbridge guy, but I think it worked quite well.

  17. @Joe: @Andy: @Jay L Gischer: No, that was the second radio serial.

    There were three others based largely on the books after Restaurant at the End of the Universe in a nice symmetry the radio serial was turned into a book, which begat more books, which were then turned into radio serials..

  18. See the HHG Wikipedia entry for basics.

  19. And in reading that I see that there is a sixth radio series that I was unaware of that I need to now find!