Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too? -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)
In answer, no, it's not enough. If one truly sees the garden is beautiful, the fairies manifest spontaneously. I will never understand the widespread and very commonplace instinct of the soul-killer.
cap writes:Though I mostly agree, I’m sad to report I’ve never seen any fairies manifest. And I’ve tried … well, not fairies but you know what I mean. I guess you can’t approach such perception directly, but I don’t know how else.
Can’t say I’ve seen them, as such. Still, that’s my reaction to the Douglas Adams quote. I honestly don’t understand where he and others like him are coming from.Here’s another quote from him:Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc., and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons. -Douglas Adams, writer, dramatist, and musician (1952-2001)My guess is that, if dolphins are able to live such a lifestyle it is because they are also able to ‘believe in fairies’. At the very least, if humans seem incapable of such a lifestyle, it seems to me that it’s because they are incapable of ‘believing in fairies’.But that, as they say, is just my take on the matter.
Robin Davies writes:If you don’t see the fairies, how do they “manifest” themselves?And if the garden is not enough, is the garden-plus-fairies enough?
I suppose that I find the implication of the question to be that the garden should be enough. I don’t see why it should have to be. It also implies that fairies are excluded from the definition of a beautiful garden, whereas I’d tend to think that they were part of the definition. I mean, I wonder what human life would be like without the ability to imagine things beyond what was immediately accessible to the senses. You can see a garden, but can you see a beautiful garden without imagination? I’m not sure you can. Douglas Adams, it would seem, was an imaginative man, and that’s one reason I don’t understand his rhetorical question. What does he have against fairies? I honestly don’t get it. is the garden-plus-fairies enough?Ah well, that’s the question. I don’t have the answer, although I can speculate. I’m not sure how many people actually see the potential beauty of any garden. Perhaps if they did, it would be enough. That would be what I meant by a spontaneous manifestation. It’s a tricky one, but I think there is always ‘something else’ in what is seen, unless it is suppressed. I think beauty is, of its nature, fertile and creative. If things were just ‘as they are’ then there would be no fertility. Things would simply remain ‘as they are’. So, the fairies manifest to the extent that the beauty is seen.In other words, the original quote sounds to me like: “Why can’t people see a garden as beautiful and at the same time deny all creative imagination?”
I’ve been thinking about this a bit more.I don’t generally go around asserting the existence of fairies. I’ve got nothing against asking questions, either, but I’m assuming Douglas Adams’s question is rhetorical, and therefore more of a statement. And, it’s not so much a pro-beautiful garden statement (which would be great) as an anti-fairy statement, which, to me, at least, is just weird. My response came from Douglas Adams’s attack on fairies. I wasn’t even thinking about fairies until I read the quote. It was a defense response. A while back I wrote a story about someone who kills fairies by reciting the anti-fairy mantra, “I don’t believe in fairies.” Now I’m beginning to wonder if such a mantra doesn’t actually call them into being, as why would you go around thinking, talking about and denying the reality of something that doesn’t even exist? Until such a denial is made, perhaps fairies are like Schrodinger’s cat, in that they both exist and don’t exist, or neither exist nor are absent from existence. However, it seems to me that maybe a denial of their existence is actually even more likely to bring them out of that state of ambiguity than an assertion of their existence. I’m actually not sure, but I’m still pondering this.In any case, Adams’s way of thinking appears to be very either/or, because he’s imagining an either/or opponent to his thought who ‘believes in fairies’, whose belief he would like to invalidate in some way. He is right and they are wrong. Fairies either exist or they don’t (and for Douglas Adams the self-evident answer is that they don’t). And so on. Douglas Adams and a friend go out into the garden after breakfast. The mist is clearing in the early sunshine and the dew sparkles in the grass. An apple falls from the tree and rolls amongst the other fallen fruit, eaten by birds and worms.”What a beautiful garden you have,” says the friend. “I can see the fairies right there at the bottom.””Damn it all! Not you, as well,” says Douglas. “I’ve just about had enough of people believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden. Why can’t the garden be beautiful with fairies poncing about at the bottom of it?””Well, I didn’t say I believed in them. I just said I could see them.””Well, they aren’t there, okay?””Er… Okay. If you say so.”Next day another visitor comes and, after breakfast, Douglas duly takes her out into the beautiful dew-fresh garden.”The garden is looking beautiful,” she says.”Damn it all. There are no fairies at the bottom of the garden!”The visitor, in curiosity, squints and peers in the direction of the bottom of the garden.”Now that you mention it, I do see fairies at the bottom of your garden. How wonderful.”Etc.