Complexity versus simplicity
Three obvious personality features differentiate Arthur and Co. from the Vogons:
- Arthur is fun loving, the Vogons are militarily driven to “get the job done”.
- Arthur and his friends (particularly Zaphod Beeblebrox) are extremely complex people, the Vogons have a one-track mind and reduce everything to its simplest possible form.
- Arthur is fascinated by the new and the mysterious, the Vogons have an unimaginative and functional view of life.
Combined together, these personality differences result in a single behavioral difference; whereas Arthur wants his mind to expand to include the rest of the universe, the Vogons want the universe to contract to fit in to their ideas.
Subsequently, if part of the universe does not fit in with Arthur’s ideas, he will try to expand the way in which he thinks:
| Arthur got terribly excited. This was exactly the sort of thing he’d been promised in the brochure. Here was a man who seemed to be moving through some kind of Escher space saying really profound things about all sorts of stuff.
It was unnerving though. The man was now stepping from pole to ground, from ground to pole, from pole to pole, from pole to horizon and back: he was making complete nonsense of Arthur’s spatial universe. `Please stop!’ Arthur said, suddenly. `Can’t take it, huh?’ said the man. Without the slightest movement he was now back, sitting cross-legged, on top of the pole forty feet in front of Arthur. `You come to me for advice, but you can’t cope with anything you don’t recognise. Hmmm. So we’ll have to tell you something you already know but make it sound like news, eh? Well, business as usual I suppose.’ He sighed and squinted mournfully into the distance. |
However, if part of the universe does not fit into the Vogons’ ideas, they will force that part of the universe to act in the way they think it should be acting. If destroying the world will enable a Vogon captain to place a tick in a checkbox, then that is what the Vogon captain will do.
| In the darkness of the bridge at the heart of the Vogon ship, Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz sat alone. Lights flared briefly across the external vision screens that lined one wall…A very deep darkness descended. The Vogon captain sat immersed in it for a few seconds…
He picked up the piece of paper again and placed a little tick in the little box. Well, that was done. His ship slunk off into the inky void. |
By destroying the world, the Vogon captain enforced the order that he saw fit for that part of the universe.
The danger of efficiency
Humans are by nature extremely complex beings. People are able to live with self-contradiction and uncertainty; that is what provides the thrill in living. Self-contradiction and uncertainty are the death knell of corporations and organisations, however.
In order for organisations to function efficiently, every person within the organisation must behave in a totally predictable manner, or pandemonium will result. The larger the organisation, the more important it is that each part of the organisation should act in the prescribed manner.
Being reduced to this efficient state, is dehumanising and dangerous. Once people have sublimated their wishful (if unrealistic) dreams to the predictability and the clarity of a large organisation, their only dreams will be the dreams of the organisation. Since the organisation is not human, the employees of the organisation will be unaware that their new dreams are in conflict with basic human values.
Just as the Vogons destroyed a world in order to tick a checkbox, so too have many corporations inflicted untold human suffering in order to maintain the internal conformity and external progress required for a healthy balance sheet.
This does not mean to say that the people who work for destructive corporations are bad people. Rather it may be said that they are forgetful people. People who have forgotten that the wonder of life is not part of a mathematical equation and that transient success in the corporsphere is a plastic dream come true.
In the final analysis, this is the message of the HHGGTG.
Are you being human? Or, have you sublimated your humanity to an organisation that is unable to differentiate between beauty and destruction.
