In the children's television series Fraggle Rock, the doozers
are creatures that live inside Fraggle Rock alongside the fraggles.
They are much smaller than the fraggles, and look like little green
construction workers with yellow helmets on. They can talk, and
speak the same language as the fraggles, but they have no social
contact with them.
Their only purpose in life is to construct large, complicated
frameworks out of a material that looks like transparent plastic
sticks. This material, however, is considered a delicacy by the
fraggles. They regularly snack on the doozer buildings, thus
apparently making the doozers' efforth endless and Sysifosian.
For many years after the series ended in my childhood in the 80's, I
had always wondered how the cuddly fraggles could go on eating the
buildings of the defenceless doozers without any remorse or
concern for their situation. I apparently missed an episode that was
recently rerun here in Norway, because it gave a most remarkable
explanation on why this was so.
In the episode, Mokey (one of the protagonists) is starting to
worry if eating the doozer building just maybe could be a wrong thing.
She soon makes the whole Fraggle Rock swear a solemn oath never to eat
the doozer buildings again. The result is that their entire cave slowly
starts filling up with the doozers' sweet-tasting framework
constructions.
The size and omnipresence of the doozer buildings is now a nuisance to
the fraggles in daily life, but Mokey is very content and proud of the
doozers' newfound protection. But as she gazes at a doozer construction,
now at an impressive size, she overhears a tiny doozer mother trying to
comfort her child. The child is very sad, because the doozers have to
move out of Fraggle Rock, and find some other place to live. Its mother
explains that this is the only way, as they had filled up all available
space, and if the doozers could not build, they would die.
The doozers had no purpose with their constructions all along! They just
had to keep building, because that was their instinct. As soon as Mokey
makes this discovery, she promptly calls all the fraggles in Fraggle
Rock together to release them from their oath. The fraggles resume
snacking on the doozer buildings soon thereafter, and everyone is
happy.