A little lesson in Galactic economics . . .
"Ah," said Arthur, "er . . ." He had an odd feeling of being like a man in the act of adultery who is surprised when the woman's husband wanders into the room, changes his trousers, passes a few idle remarks about the weather and leaves again.
"You seem ill at east," said the old man with polite concern.
"Er, no . . . well, yes. Actually, you see, we weren't really expecting to find anybody about in fact. I sort of gathered that you were all dead or something . . ."
"Dead?" said the old man. "Good gracious me, no, we have but slept."
"Slept?" said Arthur incredulously.
"Yes, through the economic recession, you see," said the old man, apparently unconcerned about whether Arthur understood a word he was talking about or not.
Arthur had to prompt him again.
"Er, economic recession?"
"Well, you see, five million years ago the Galactic economy collapsed, and seeing that custom built planets are something of a luxury commodity, you see . . ."
He paused and looked at Arthur.
"You know we built planets, do you?" he asked solemnly.
"Well, yes," said Arthur. "I'd sort of gathered . . ."
"Fascinating trade," said the old man, and a wistful look came into his eyes, "doing the coastlines was always my favorite. Used to have endless fun doing the little bits in fjords.. . . so anyway," he said, trying to find his thread again, "the recession came and we decided it would save a lot of bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the computers to revive us when it was all over."
The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued.
"The computers were index-linked to the Galactic stock-market prices, you see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services."
There you go. An entire planet's population linked to the economy. Instead of suffering through a recession and all of its attendant problems--poverty, bankruptcy, hunger, social injustice, social inequality, uprisings, wars--the citizens of Magrathea choose to take a nap.
If only it were that simple. Lose a job. Take a nap. Get divorced. Take a nap. Cancer diagnosis. Take a nap. Donald Trump is president. Take a nap. Broken heart. Take a nap. If sleep were a cure for all the world's problems, I think we'd have a whole lot of the world's peoples hitting their snooze buttons about now.
Of course, sleep is just a way of avoiding pain and hurt and struggle. I would venture to guess that we've all done it once or twice, as well. Rather than deal with a problem head-on, I've retreated to my bed, turned off the lights, and just gone to sleep. Of course, when I woke up, the problem was there waiting for me in the next room, just as big and ugly.
Most of the time, I prefer to address struggles immediately. Work on them. Solve them. Move on. That's more my style. If I can do all that in the space of an hour, even better. Whether it's brakes failing on a car or a kid getting sick or immigrants living in concentration camps, I want an immediate cure. I don't want prolonged suffering or strife.
The world doesn't work that way, unfortunately. For example, everyone knows that keeping children locked up in warehouses without their parents is wrong. Inhuman. Unconscionable. We should have learned that lesson from Nazi Germany or the Japanese internment camps during World War II. Yet, here we sit in the year 2019, and we're doing the same thing again. We haven't learned.
There's a paragraph in the passage above where Douglas Adams makes a joke about a man caught in the act of adultery. It's like a Monty Python moment--a husband catching his wife committing adultery, and the husband simply talks about the weather with his wife's fuckbuddy and leaves the room. While this little section may strike the funny bone of some readers, I don't find it particularly amusing.
You see, my wife has struggled with sexual addiction in the past. Thus, I have been that husband in the paragraph above. Adams is trying to be humorous, and I don't find it funny. It would be like somebody telling a joke about a drowning person to a child whose father just died in a boating accident. So, I don't find jokes or books or movies or TV shows about people committing adultery very funny.
That kind of humor attempts to diminish the pain and hurt of the people involved. I may be sounding like an incredible wet blanket right now, but I do have a point to make. Most people reading that passage in
Hitchhiker's would laugh at the absurdity of the situation that Adams describes. I get that. I, myself, wouldn't laugh, for very personal reasons.
I am not saying that I don't find inappropriate humor funny. I do. Generally, though, humor at the expense of another person's/people's hurt is never good. Anything (whether a joke or political agenda) that diminishes the suffering of a fellow human being is part of the problem, not a solution.
Language is one of the most basic ways to address any wrong. Don't apply the word "gay" or "retarded" to a person or situation that you find irritating or ridiculous. Use words to uplift instead of beat down. And, when you witness something that is blatantly racist or homophobic or Islamophobic or sexist or ageist, something that violates human dignity is some way, speak out. Keep speaking until your voice is heard. If everybody did this, the world would be a much better place.
That's my soapbox rant of the week. I'm stepping down now. It's hot outside.
Saint Marty's thinking it's time for some ice cream.
