The point he was trying to make felt like being bludgeoned over the head with a cluebat, but considering it was published 50 years ago...
It's intriguing how the theme doesn't change much though; it came up in the 80s in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ("Which is why it was eventually decided to cut through the whole tangled problem and breed an animal that actually wanted to be eaten and was capable of saying so clearly and distinctly. And here I am."), and more recently in some Twilight Zone-like show whose name slips my mind, and I'm sure a dozen more times in the middle.