So, we are reading the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy this year. (as i’m sure the people who follow me will already know)
And there was this really funny excerpt about vogons.
So first of all, I think I need to clarify who the vogons are. The vogons are a fantasy race in the book that are extremely annoying and dimwitted, in addition to having the characteristics of present-day D. Trump, they also are extremely intent on causing harm and agony to any other species.
An example in the book is this “If one by some peculiar chance wanders upon vogon territory, the vogon inhabitant will then precede to inflict harm and agony to the point that one will wish they were never born (or if they are clearer minded, wish that for the vogon”.
And this was really interesting to me because it’s an example of people first blaming themselves instead of others, which goes against common logic of most blaming the person causing annoyance. But I think there is a reason to it.
The first reason is due to the incomphrehensible reason the vogons wish to cause agonoy upon the subject; In the book, the vogons are depicted as a species that is bureaucratically, pointlessly, unimaginably awful. They wish to impose harm on people not for any reasonable reason, but rather because thats of there nature. This transcends a normal cause and effect procedure. Because this is so absurd, the victim instead of thinking, “damn you” (typical response) , thinks: why am I here? why me? It’s kinda like gaslighting.
The second reason I think is because of the overwhelming power assymetry between the vogon and the victim. In this case, the victim thinking for the vogon to not exist is futile, so instead, I think the victim, in order to regain a sense of control, thinks “I wish I wasn’t born”, in order to feel a sense of control. Like the logic is “If I wern’t born, I wouldn’t be here, therefore I wouldn’t be tortured”. Which is again similar to that of phycologically abused people.
So overall, I guess what I wrote was kinda pointless, but it does show how these patterns such as manipulation etc show up at all levels of the universe both big and small.
And I wasted another god forsaken 23 minutes and 24 seconds on this (excluding this sentance in the time).