Seniors, please check my precis

[Adnan Gul]

Original:
Look where we may, the present trend of civilization cannot escape our notice. Rather it is painfully brought home to us that we are travelling down an inclined plane. Instead of moving upward, letting the ape and the tiger die, we are going back to the beast once more. If civilization means a constant effort to live progressively a higher and nobler life than before, it means the subordination of the self to the interest of the public at large; it means stern self-control and self-discipline. It must be admitted that since the Second World War we have travelled a long way in the direction of barbarism. Unbridled licence has usurped the place of stern self-control. Fidelity, constancy, and purity in man as well as in woman have given place to a desire for self-satisfaction and casual enjoyment. At the same time the desire to marry and shoulder the responsibility of married life are on the decline. This same beastly tendency is equally apparent in the political sphere too. Time there was when one nation was ashamed to make an unprovoked attack on another and had to find out some plausible excuse to accomplish its selfish end. The modern formula is that a nation must have a place in the sun and scope for development and the fulfilment of this destiny is supposed to be a sufficient excuse to destroy the independence of its weaker neighbours. Civilized society seems to be like a ship without rudder or compass and madly driven by a crew of maniacs fast drifting towards the rocks which lie ahead of it and which will send it to the bottom. (275 words)

Precis:
Civilization teaches man to live the life with lofty ideals; to sacrifice one’s own interest for the sake of society. But since Second World War, the trend of civilization has been completely reversed; our virtuous qualities have been replaced with evil ones. We are even not ready to shoulder our responsibilities. The same trend is observed in political arena too. Once, military expeditions, with even solid reasons, were a source of shame for the nation; but today even petty reasons are enough to attack the weaker nations. Civilized society is heading towards a disaster. (94 words)
Title: Civilization on Decline

Seniors please check my precis and suggest some tips.

[Adnan Gul]

is there any body who is willing to check my precis and suggest me some measures....

[mustansar~hussain]

In my opinion, your attempt is good. However, I have highlighted some grammatical mistakes in it.

1) But since the Second World War
2) We are not even ready to shoulder
3) The same trend is observed in the political arena too
4) but today, even petty reasons

[Darkness]

Originally Posted by mustansar~hussain

In my opinion, your attempt is good. However, I have highlighted some grammatical mistakes in it.

1) But since the Second World War
2) We are not even ready to shoulder
3) The same trend is observed in the political arena too
4) but today, even petty reasons

That moment when you agree with someone just because you are lacking imagination/own point of view at the moment and point out the grammatical mistakes only

[anabiya mughal]

One of the fundamental facts about words is that the most useful ones in our language have many meanings. That is partly why they are so useful: they work overtime... Think of -all the various things we mean by the word “foot” on different occasion: one of the lower extremities of the human body, a measure of verse, the ground about a tree, twelve inches, - the floor in front of the stairs. The same is true of nearly every common noun or verb... considering the number of ways of taking a particular word, the tusk of speaking clearly and being understood would seem pretty hopeless if it were not for another very important fact about language. Though a word may have many senses, these senses can be controlled, up to a point, by the context in which the word is used. When we find the word in a particular verbal setting we can usually decide quite definitely which of the many senses of the word relevant. If a poet says his verse has feet, it doesn’t occur to you that he could mean it’s a yard long or is three legged (unless perhaps you are a critic planning to puncture the poet with a pun about his “lumping verse”). The context rules out these maverick senses quite decisively.



title: words and understanding their different meanings
precis:
the fact about words is that they have very different meanings in our language. If we take the word 'foot' on different aspects, it can refer to a part of human body,measurement or a ground of tree.Using a word in a number of ways is very difficult.The meaning of word can be extracted from its senses.When we use a word we can easily decide that in which sense a word has been used.if a poet says his verse is 3ft it does not mean that he says 12 inches,its sense could be pointed out in context.

[mustansar~hussain]

Grammatical Mistakes

the(The) fact about words is that they have very different meanings in our language. If we take the word 'foot' on different aspects, it can refer to a part of the human body, measurement or a ground of the tree. Using a word in a number of ways is very difficult. The meaning of word can be extracted from its senses. When we use a word we can easily decide that in which sense a word has been used. if(If) a poet says his verse is 3ft it does not mean that he says 12 inches,(semicolon or full stop is needed here) its sense could be pointed out in context.

Analysis of Precis
1) the fact about words is that they(avoid wordiness) "Words" have very different meanings in our language.

2) If we take the word 'foot' on different aspects, it can refer to a part of human body,measurement or a ground of tree.Using a word in a number of ways is very difficult.The meaning of word can be extracted from its senses.

Rearrange order of sentences:
The meaning of word can be extracted from its senses. Using a word in a number of ways is very difficult.If we take the word 'foot' on different aspects, it can refer to a part of human body,measurement or a ground of tree.


3) [Don't inculcate examples in a precis]if a poet says his verse is 3ft it does not mean that he says 12 inches,its sense could be pointed out in context.

4) Replace first person pronouns with third person.

5) Bad title; attempt again.

[Eager]

Originally Posted by Adnan Gul

Original:
Look where we may, the present trend of civilization cannot escape our notice. Rather it is painfully brought home to us that we are travelling down an inclined plane. Instead of moving upward, letting the ape and the tiger die, we are going back to the beast once more. If civilization means a constant effort to live progressively a higher and nobler life than before, it means the subordination of the self to the interest of the public at large; it means stern self-control and self-discipline. It must be admitted that since the Second World War we have travelled a long way in the direction of barbarism. Unbridled licence has usurped the place of stern self-control. Fidelity, constancy, and purity in man as well as in woman have given place to a desire for self-satisfaction and casual enjoyment. At the same time the desire to marry and shoulder the responsibility of married life are on the decline. This same beastly tendency is equally apparent in the political sphere too. Time there was when one nation was ashamed to make an unprovoked attack on another and had to find out some plausible excuse to accomplish its selfish end. The modern formula is that a nation must have a place in the sun and scope for development and the fulfilment of this destiny is supposed to be a sufficient excuse to destroy the independence of its weaker neighbours. Civilized society seems to be like a ship without rudder or compass and madly driven by a crew of maniacs fast drifting towards the rocks which lie ahead of it and which will send it to the bottom. (275 words)

Precis:
Civilization teaches man to live the life with lofty ideals; to sacrifice one’s own interest for the sake of society. But since Second World War, the trend of civilization has been completely reversed; our virtuous qualities have been replaced with evil ones. We are even not ready to shoulder our responsibilities. The same trend is observed in political arena too. Once, military expeditions, with even solid reasons, were a source of shame for the nation; but today even petty reasons are enough to attack the weaker nations. Civilized society is heading towards a disaster. (94 words)
Title: Civilization on Decline

Seniors please check my precis and suggest some tips.

A very good attempt. Just a couple of observations:

1) Try not to use too many semi colons in such a short precis. Try using connectors instead.
2) Title can be improved more.

Keep practising. Best of luck!

[hazelnut]

Probably the only protection for contemporary man is to discover how to use his intelligence in the service of love and kindness. The training of human intelligence must include the simultaneous development of the empathic capacity. Only in this way can intelligence be made an instrument of social morality and responsibility — and thereby increase the chances of survival.

The need to produce human beings with trained morally sensitive intelligence is essentially a challenge to educators and educational institutions. Traditionally, the realm of social morality was left to religion and the churches as guardians or custodians. But their failure to fulfill this responsibility and their yielding to the seductive lures of the men of wealth and! pomp and power and documented by the history of the last two thousand years and have now resulted in the irrelevant “God Is Dead” theological rhetoric The more pragmatic men of power have had no time or inclination to deal with the fundamental problems of social morality. For them simplistic Machiavellianism must remain the guiding principle of their decisions-power is morality, morality is power. This oversimplification increases the chances of nuclear devastation. We must therefore hope that educators and educational institutions have the capacity, the commitment and the time to instill moral sensitivity as an integral part of the complex pattern of function human intelligence. Some way must be found in the training of human beings to give them the assurance to love, the security to be kind. and the integrity required for a functional empathy.
PRECIS:
The only way to ensure mankind’s survival is to find out the ways in which intelligence can be used to promote love, sense of responsibility and virtues. Hence along with the refining of human intelligence, the senses of empathy and morality also need to be nourished. Conventionally, the moral training was the duty of religious figures and institutions. However their failure is evident from the history. They fell prey to the longing for affluence and power resulting in general disregard for religion and god. Whereas the practical men never paid heed to the moral problems of society. As for them, the quest for power was the only code of life. Such beliefs augment the probability of nuclear depredation. Nevertheless, tutoring an intelligence which has moral judgement is a real test of the ability of our teachers and schools. And our only hope is that they do possess the will, time and potential to in calculate morality in the intricate structure of the human intelligence.

[hazelnut]

2013 Precis: Culture, in human societies, has two main aspects; an external, formal aspect and an inner, ideological aspect. The external forms of culture, social or artistic, are merely an organized expression of its inner ideological aspect, and both are an inherent component of a given social structure. They are changed and modified when this structure is changed or modified and because of this organic link they also help and influence such changes in their parent organism. Cultural Problems, therefore, cannot be studied or understood or solved in isolation from social problems, i.e. problems of political and economic relationships. The cultural problems of the underdeveloped countries, therefore, have to be understood and solved in the light of larger perspective, in the context of underlying social problems. Very broadly speaking, these problems are primarily the problems of arrested growth; they originate primarily from long years of imperialist-Colonialist domination and the remnants of a backward outmoded social structure. This should not require much elaboration European Imperialism caught up with the countries of Asia, Africa or Latin America between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. Some of them were fairly developed feudal societies with ancient traditions of advanced feudal culture. Others had yet to progress beyond primitive pastoral tribalism. Social and cultural development of them all was frozen at the point of their political subjugation and remained frozen until the coming of political independence. The culture of these ancient feudal societies, in spite of much technical and intellectual excellence, was restricted to a small privileged class and rarely intermingled with the parallel unsophisticated folk culture of the general masses. Primitive tribal culture, in spite of its childlike beauty, had little intellectual content. Both feudal and tribal societies living contagiously in the same homelands were constantly engaged in tribal, racial and religious or other feuds with their tribal and feudal rivals. Colonialist – imperialist domination accentuated this dual fragmentation, the vertical division among different tribal and national groups, the horizontal division among different classes within the same tribal or national groups. This is the basic ground structure, social and cultural, bequeathed to the newly liberated countries by their former over lords.
Precis: Culture of every social group basically has two fundamental parts: external and internal. The external part is actually a structured depiction of the internal ideological part. The cultural components and social group are intricately connected to each other. Any change in one induces a change in another. Consequently one can’t be understood without understanding the other. Hence, in order to solve the cultural problems of the underdeveloped nations, their social framework needs to be studied. Stunted development is the basic issue of these nations. The basic causes for which are prolonged colonial rule and continuation of outdated social system. During the colonial rule, the social and cultural progress of the colonized lands stopped altogether. Moreover the colonies had either a tribal or a feudal system. The simplistic tribal societies lacked an intellectual culture. Whereas in the feudal societies the intellectual culture was limited to the elite class only. Furthermore, both the societies were always busy fighting with their enemies. Also the colonial masters augmented the divide amongst the societies and within a society. Hence, this was the cultural and social set up inherited by the newly independent nations.
title: causes of underdevelopment of the nations

[hazelnut]

Precis 2006:
Passage: It was not so in Greece, where philosophers professed less, and undertook more. Parmenides pondered nebulously over the mystery of knowledge; but the pre-Socratics kept their eyes with fair consistency upon the firm earth, and sought to ferret out its secrets by observation and experience, rather than to create it by exuding dialectic; there were not many introverts among the Greeks. Picture Democritus, the Laughing Philosopher; would he not be perilous company for the dessicated scholastics who have made the disputes about the reality of the external world take the place of medieval discourses on the number of angles that could sit on the point of a pin? Picture Thales, who met the challenge that philosophers were numskulls by “cornering the market” and making a fortune in a year. Picture Anaxagoras, who did the work of Darwin for the Greeks and turned Pericles form a wire-pulling politician into a thinker and a statesman, Picture old Socrates, unafraid of the sun or the stars, gaily corrupting young men and overturning governments; what would he have done to these bespectacled seedless philosophasters who now litter the court of the once great Queen? To Plato, as to these virile predecessors, epistemology was but the vestibule of philosophy, akin to the preliminaries of love; it was pleasant enough for a while, but it was far from the creative consummation that drew wisdom’s lover on. Here and there in the shorter dialogues, the Master dallied amorously with the problems of perception, thought, and knowledge; but in his more spacious moments he spread his vision over larger fields, built himself ideal states and brooded over the nature and destiny of man. And finally in Aristotle philosophy was honoured in all her boundless scope and majesty; all her mansions were explored and made beautiful with order; here every problem found a place and every science brought its toll to wisdom. These men knew that the function of philosophy was not to bury herself in the obscure retreats of epistemology, but to come forth bravely into every realm of inquiry, and gather up all knowledge for the coordination and illumination of human character and human life.
Precis:
Unlike today’s philosophers, the Greek philosophers worked more than they declared. Today’s worthless philosopher waste time in pointless debates whereas the Greek ones worked on pragmatic subjects like state and man. Most of The Greek philosophers tried to find their answers through the systemic process of observations and experimentations. Moreover, some of them proved that philosophers are not stupid by attaining affluence. Others changed the useless political personalities of the time into great leaders. Like his predecessors, Plato knew that epistemology is a temporary stage in the course of philosophy and is insufficient to satisfy human intelligence. Hence he spent most of his time working on practical ideas rather than epistemology. Finally, Aristotle gave philosophy its prestige. He opened up new fields, organized the knowledge and co-ordinated philosophy with sciences. Resultantly, it became clear that the real aim of philosophy is not to engage in ludicrous declamation but to gain knowledge which makes man’s life easy and meaningful.
Title: the reality of philosophy