Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 291.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2024-12-21 08:24:00+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: Solticial musings

Digital oldtimers here will know that as editor of Humanist I take the
opportunity at the winter Solstice to muse on this medium and draw its
calendar year to a close. After so long there's little news to report or
summarise--my impossible dream for other, more public news services--but
a Janus-like looking back and forward is not without its uses.

After so long you might think I'd have put aside another dream, for a
forum in which vigorous intellectual discussion is constant rather than
sporadic. There are, as you know, so many ways of of letting off excess
steam nowadays, but these other media are shaped in such a way that real
discussion (Gadamer's 'genuine conversation') seldom happens in any of
them. In its latter years the journal whose editorship I am putting down
in a few days exposed me to the fire-hose of desperate attempts to get
published anywhere, anyhow. Even that very small percentage of articles
which made it through to publication in my journal were indeed journal
articles, hardly in most if not all hands not conversational at all, but
presentational, runs at a QED. At least those who do not have to worry
about 'promotion' anymore hardly ever dare to be provocative, to get us
thinking and talking back. That's what Humanist has always aimed
at--and, I am happy to be able to say, what some here actually sometimes do.

Yes, I know: the real world and the world as it actually is are
radically different. But those who with wit, skill and intelligence give
us a kick, get us talking back, do us a great service. This is to thank
them and to encourage others to be similarly possessed.

Many holidays at this darkest time of year in the Northern Hemisphere,
celebrated also (to quote one of my most favourite authors from
Downunder) in "the heat of Christmas". To everyone wherever Humanist
reaches, I send greetings at a chilly sunrise!

All best,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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