Friday, May 13, 2016

Hitchhiker's Guide 2

The main point of Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is that you shouldn't think about anything too much and just live life. The ridiculously illogical nature of the Galaxy and the characters' indifference to it shows this very well. Things that just don't make sense like planet-building planets, time travel, the end of the universe, the state of the Altairian dollar and engines that run on improbability are met with nothing but indifference to most of the characters besides Arthur, who can usually be found trying to wrap his head around these concepts and objects. This is the main difference between Arthur and everyone else. If somebody said that a rock concert disrupted the weather patterns of a planet so that the surface was perpetually at that perfect temperature to go to the beach, the other characters would accept the fact and move on, Arthur, however, would spend  good chunk of time afterwards trying to understand how that happened. As evidenced by Slartibartfast, who said: "...I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied", People would be much happier just accepting how things are and living life rather than wondering why something is some way or thinking about the state of things. In many ways, he is right, not thinking about deeper meanings and just living life to the best of your ability would probably increase the overall happiness level in the world, but I would definitely not be satisfied with myself if I didn't feed my curiosity regularly.

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