Introduction
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction novel by Douglas Adams that takes place shortly after the destruction of the planet Earth. Arthur Dent is the main character who is just a normal human on Earth, facing "normal" human problems (saving his home from being demolished by the government for a bypass) when his friend, Ford Prefect, helps put Arthur's problems in perspective. Ford informs him that Earth is about to be demolished with it. Luckily, as the planet is being destroyed, Arthur and Ford hitch a ride on the Vogon ship, where they go on an extremely absurd galactic adventure. One question that is constantly brought up in this novel is one regarded the meaning of life. Why are humans here and what is our purpose? Adams uses academic theories, like the idea of Absurdism and even the theory of the Holographic Principle, to try and answer this inevitable question. Here, we will compare Adams' idea of the meaning of life with modern philosophical ideas on the matter.
Absurdism: The Story of Sisyphus
Absurdism is a philosophical idea that shows up repeatedly in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This idea states that humans have this undying need to find a meaning to their lives, but due to the vast amount of information and unknowns in the Universe, this need will ultimately fail. (Aronson) A story that is brought up to show the absurdity in finding a meaning is the situation of Sisyphus. Sisyphus was a king in Greek mythology who was condemned to pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll all the way back down again. He was to repeat this process for all of eternity. Albert Camus related this story to the idea of Absurdism in his 1942 book on The Myth of Sisyphus. He claims that man is condemned to the same type of meaningless task, except instead of a boulder, humanity's task is to search for a meaning to its existence. (Camus) Humans are searching for this meaning to life, but it will never be reached because it is impossible for us to comprehend. The absurdity arises not from the Universe itself, or from humanity, but instead from where our need to find meaning meets the impossibility of conceiving it. Furthermore, Camus goes on to state that we shouldn't be discouraged from this. Suicide might look like the option in dealing with Absurdism, but in reality, without man there is no absurdity. This contradiction must be lived, yet rejected. (Sagi)
Adams uses this idea of Absurdism, but instead of rejecting it or looking at it negatively, he embraces it and brings humor to the matter. This can be seen in the introduction of the book:
"Then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth England suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time I was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything. Sadly, however, before she could get to a telephone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever." (Adams, 2)
This story has little to no significance to the main plot of the book, but it shows Adams' humorous yet sad approach to find meaning. This girl had come up with a solution to solve all the sadness in the world, but lost it to a terribly stupid catastrophe. He doesn't even mention what the catastrophe was, further increasing the absurdity of the situation.
Another example of Absurdism in Adams' science fiction novel would be the nuclear missiles heading for the Heart of Gold turning into a whale and a bowl of petunias. The whale even asks himself the same questions we humans inherently ask ourselves:
"Ah...! What's happening? it thought. Err, excuse me, who am I? Hello? Why am I here? What's my purpose in life? What do I mean by who am I?" (Adams, 89)
Then, the bowl of petunias and whale both fall to their death. The fact that the nuclear missiles were turned into the whale and petunias was pretty absurd to begin with, but the contemplation of self-meaning of the whale during its fall was Adams' attempt to mock humanity for the same search for meaning.
Finally, and probably the best example of absurdity in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was the answer to life, the Universe, and everything. The book goes over how Deep Thought was a supercomputer used to compute and check this answer. After 7.5 million years, Deep Thought concludes that the answer is 42. This is incredibly absurd. Deep Thought does 7.5 million years of calculations, and comes out with a simple answer of 42. Furthermore, Deep Thought can't even specifically say what the question is that this answers. This shows the idea that Adams was trying to portray, that these questions we find essential, are absurdly meaningless.
The Holographic Principle and The Simulation Hypothesis
Another philosophical theory on the meaning of life that Adams mentions in his book is the idea of the Holographic Principle and the Simulation Hypothesis. The Holographic Principle is a theory proposed in physics to help solve the black hole information paradox. As particles travel inside a black hole, their information is seemingly lost. Everything that enters the black hole heads to the singularity and is chaotically tangled, stripping apart all their intrinsic properties. All hope for finding this lost information was gone until Hawking suggested the idea of black holes emitting radiation, coined Hawking radiation. (Okon and Sudarsky) This was because there was finally a correlation that could be made between the size of the black hole and the information that the black hole took in. However, it was not the correlation that we were expecting. Hawking came to the conclusion that the maximal entropy in any region of a black hole is correlated to the radius squared and not cubed. Basically, as a black hole obtains more information, it increases proportional to its surface are and not its volume. (Bostrom) This shocked physicists everywhere, since typically as you add more and more to a 3-dimensional object, its volume is proportionally increased. String theorists like Stanford's Leonard Susskind saw this opportunity to bring up the only theory that would make sense of it, the Simulation Hypothesis. This theory claims the Universe is a 3-dimensional representation of information in 2-dimensions, much like how a hologram takes information and projects it in 3-D. (Frenkel) This may sound a bit farfetched, but it is the leading idea of us all living in a computer simulation. What does this mean about the meaning of life? Currently, most physicists claim that free will is thrown out with the Holographic Principle and the Simulation Hypothesis. This suggests that the Universe is pre-determined and the meaning behind humanity is practically nonsensical or illogical.
The ideas Adams covered were similar to the idea of a simulated reality and he used this to further portray the meaning of life in his book. As mentioned earlier, Deep Thought was a supercomputer used in the book to calculate the answer to life, the Universe, and everything. After taking 7.5 million years and calculating the answer, 42, Deep Thought claims that it must build another powerful supercomputer to calculate the question behind this answer. This computer was called Earth, suggesting that everything living on Earth was a part of this computer simulation. Earth was almost through with this computation via simulation, until the Vogons destroyed the planet, further showing Adams absurd approach to the meaning of life. The idea that Earth could be a simulation to answer a higher question runs parallel to the idea mentioned in the Simulation Hypothesis. This thought process leads us humans to believe that we are apart of a simulated virtual reality and our thoughts and actions are all pre-determined.
Conclusion
Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy shows, through the idea of Absurdism and the Holographic Principle, that the meaning of life has no meaning. Through countless examples, Adams drills the idea into our minds that there is no meaning behind the lives we live. He also shows that we shouldn't take this as sad or tragic, however, but instead embrace it and see the humor in it all. In the words of Camus himself, "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." (Camus)
Works Cited
Adams, Douglas, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Harmony, 1980. Print.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Aronson, Ronald. "Albert Camus." Stanford University. Stanford University, 27 Oct. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
(Aronson)
Bostrom, Nick. "Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?" Are We Living in a Computer Simulation. The Philosophical Quarterly, 2003. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
(Bostrom)
Camus, Albert. "The Myth of Sisyphus." The Myth of Sisyphus. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
(Camus)
Frenkel, Edward. "Is the Universe a Simulation?" The New York Times. The New York Times. 15 Feb. 2014. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
(Frenkel)
Okon, Elias, and Daniel Sudarsky. "The Black Hole Information Paradox and the Collapse of the Wave Function." Foundations of Physics 45.4(2015): 461-70. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
(Okon and Sudarsky)
Sagi, Avi. "Avi Sagi, Is the Absurd the Problem or the Solution?-PhilPapers." Avi Sagi, Is the Absurd the Problem or the Solution?-PhilPapers. Philosophy Today, 1994. Web. 28 Nov. 2016.
(Sagi)