In his novel The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams describes the man rules the entirety of the universe. The man lives in a ramshackle hut on a hidden planet, completely oblivious to the fact that his decisions affect the universe as a whole. He lives simply, taking literally nothing for granted. He is the pure quintessence of a scientist, believing in nothing, not what he sees, hears, feels, not even his own memory. He expects nothing, every action and reaction is a new and delightful discovery.
However, the interesting thing is, Douglas Adams implies that this man is completely aware of the subtleties around him, subtleties that could only be recognized with an understanding of the world beyond simply taking the world at face value. For instance, this excerpt.
“He picked up from the table a piece of paper and the stub of a pencil. He held one in one hand and the other in the other, and experimented with the different ways of bringing them together. He tried holding the pencil under the paper, then over the paper, then next to the paper. He tried wrapping the paper round the pencil, he tried rubbing the stubby end of the pencil against the paper. It made a mark, and he was delighted with the discovery, as he was every day. He picked up another piece of paper from the table. This had a crossword on it. He studied it briefly and filled in a couple of clues before losing interest.”
-The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Chapter 28
His purely scientific nature shows through most of the paragraph, except in the last sentence. Obviously, he would need some knowledge of literature, spelling, and at least a little knowledge of the world to be able to fill out crossword clues. This idea is stressed even more when he allows Trillian and Zaphod to slip away unnoticed, leaving Zarniwoop locked outside, stranded on the planet in the pouring rain. The man then willfully ignores Zarniwoop’s angry knocking on the door by talking to his table.
The man’s duality of reality, his two-faced experience of the world has many different explanations, and raises some troubling questions. The most likely explanation, though the most bland, is simply that the man is insane, and his moments of clarity result in him acting normally, like any of us. Perhaps he grew weary of the isolation on the barren planet, and his scientific nature is merely a way for him to pass the time, to keep himself amused, and his moments of normality are realizations that even he must come back to the reality forced upon all of us. Or perhaps Douglas Adams means to imply that even the most scientific of us have biases and realities hidden underneath the faces we show society. Perhaps he means to imply that even the most perfect of us cannot escape the human condition. Perhaps he means to imply that no matter who we are, no matter how objective we claim or want to be, we are slaves to the knowledge we have, to the way society tempered us, to the way we were raised, what we were taught and what we think we know. Perhaps the man who rules the universe is attempting to escape those fetters in his isolation, to become the perfect unbiased being, trying to achieve some sort of enlightenment from nonbelief instead of belief. If so, even he realizes what a fruitless endeavor that is.
So,
Such a duality, the realization of multiple levels of reality, the acceptance of perspectives and biases, and the attempts at rationalization and scientific endeavor, are trademarks of my writing. They are my literary watermarks, my personal philosophies, my written ideas. I am the Opiate of the Asses. Like you, the reader, I am only human, but this is what I have to offer; my ideas. Like the man who rules the universe, I am aware of my biases and faults, yet I attempt to remain aloof and scientific. If you think like me, if you like what you’ve read here, then I invite you to follow me.
Welcome to the reality of the Opiate of the Asses.
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