Zaphod Beeblebrox and Pluralphobia

Morgan (host) (he/him) | posted 30.12.2024 | translated 20.12.2025

I've recently came back to the series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It is still very dear to me, even though its humour doesn't resonate with me anymore (which is not necessarily the fault of the Hitchhiker's Guide, there are only few things left that I still find funny). In spite of my deep admiration for this masterpiece, even before some tropes bothered me. Now it only affected me more due to my heightened sensitivity. But this time was the first that I paid more attention to the character of Zaphod Beeblebrox and it led me to rather disheartening reflections.

For those unfamiliar with the Hitchhiker's Guide: Zaphod Beeblebrox is a humanoid being with two heads (and three arms, but it's irrelevant in the context of this post). He is, nonetheless, definitely a singular person. His heads act independently only occasionally, for comedic effect. Apart from these circumstances there's only one, unified Zaphod. Zaphod said something, thought something, wants something, looked somewhere. With which head? It's utterly irrelevant. His heads are indistinguishable. Most of the time they don't even have separate thoughts, not even speaking about personalities or names (and as a writer I cannot also not notice enormous lost potential: how much conflict one could create, if one head loved Trillian and the other didn't, or one wanted to just have fun, and the other to fulfill Zaphod's mission).

I have no doubt that Adams would realise that it's not how two physically separated brains would work, if he just gave it any deeper thought. But it probably didn't really matter to him. It definitely didn't for me, when the topic of plurality was not yet such an important part of my life. Besides, it's science fiction; who cares about the neurobiological constraints, when characters travel through space with a spacecraft powered by improbability?

In real life thankfully almost nobody treats conjoined twins as one person with two heads. But it is the only exception. Two-headed alien, two-headed giant or a hydra, we intuitively regard them as one being with two heads, not two beings with one body. The same with such reptiles that actually exist. We talk about a snake with two heads, not about conjoined snakes. Although maybe I have unreasonable expectations, since dishearteningly high percentage of people doesn't perceive other animals as conscious and sentient at all.

In older times such perception was more justified. For me personally it is difficult to imagine, but there was a time people had no idea that thoughts and consciousness come from the brain. In antiquity the heart was commonly regarded as the source of the intelligence. But now we know better, and we still aren't building our perception of the world on this knowledge. It may be, I belive, a part of a cultural heritage. The concept of conjoined twins was presented to me as two persons connected with each other through the body and I have never questioned it. The concept of two-headed snakes was presented to me as a snake with two heads and I have never questioned it, until I stumbled across somebody's question, whether we should treat it as a one snake or two. Maybe if everybody talked about conjoined snakes, the idea of speaking about two beings as one with two heads would sound absurd to us.

All of this dispirited me of course mainly because of plurality, since the problem is not present with conjoined twins, and for mythical creatures and reptiles the matter is, I suppose, completely irrelevant. This intuition, present in me as well, made me realise how much more deeply rooted is the basis of societal pluralphobia. I put so much hope in science, in the theory of integrated information, which may show the world that there may be present many consciousnesses in one brain. But how does it matter, if people are inclined to notice only one being even when there are two brains? It seems we need much more than proving our separate consciousnesses to be granted a status of a person.

The only thing left is to hope that the case of conjoined twins shows that our perception of beings such as Zaphod is shaped culturally, and not ingrained in our species. I will most probably not live to see a social change in this regard, if it ever happens. But I may try to contribute to it. Therefore, I decided to start talking about conjoined snakes instead of a snake with two heads. Altough I really don't think that it makes any difference for the snakes themself.