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Theodicy, if you're not familiar with the term, is the attempt to reconcile the existence of suffering and evil in the world with a just god. The concept is pretty uniquely Judeo-Christian, the term being coined by Leibniz in fact, because, in order to be relevant, it requires both a god that can be addressed and to whom you can apply the notion of justice. That's not to say that an explanation of suffering is not prevalent in historical cultures. Hinduism and Buddhism both evolved, at least in part, to explain and escape suffering. It's hard to imagine that the harsh conditions in which the Vikings and Egyptians lived did not affect their conception of the afterlife. The Vikings embraced the ferocity needed to survive and envisioned the afterlife as one endless battle and the subsequent rewards of victory whereas the Egyptian pharaohs imagined a place where they could be comfortable as they so rarely were in life.
Now what in the hell does this have to do with Minecraft? Well, I was playing Minecraft for the first time as a friend gifted it to me, saving me from the hell Terraria visited upon TotalBiscuit vis a vis Jesse Cox, and I was not a happy camper. In Minecraft, monsters start spawning around you at nighttime, at which point you must be in a shelter. Fighting them is a largely futile enterprise as they spawned quite densely. The best course of action is just to make a mad dash to your shelter. It's more of an inconvenience for the most part; you can run back to your corpse and if you make it in time recover all of your items. The frequency of it to me galled me, though. The rows of identical tiles supplied me with few landmarks and I'd find myself too far from home, even when I wasn't far at all. I was stuck in a conundrum where I couldn't venture too far afield but couldn't do much besides dig aimlessly where I was. What should have been my finest hour, however, turned into my darkest moment. I found the mother of all caves: a vast network full of iron and coal and 3 new resources I had never seen- gold, lapis lazuli and redstone. I mined greedily, but just as I was about to leave, my inventory brimming, a skeleton took advantage of my lapse in attention to my hunger bar and killed me. I raced back to my corpse, only to discover that the zone with my outpost was raining (the undead monsters don't burst into flame in the rain even during the day) and teeming with monsters. Without a sword, there was no way I could make my way back through the cave to recover my items.
Fuck this. I switch the game mode to Peaceful, in which no monsters spawn, and promptly die to lava. I start a new world and wander around a bit only to realize...this is boring. In the previous world, I had made two outposts, each with a crafting table, a furnace, and chests. I worked on my first shelter for several days, complete with a moat and a roof. It was an ugly piece of shit. I had to have a supply of food, so I made a pen and bred ~50 chickens even though I only needed 2-3 per day. To solve my navigation problems, I erected pillars that I could see from a long distance. In the new world, since no monsters came out, I had no reason to build a shelter and stick around one area. I simply carried my crafting table around with me, digging aimlessly. I was essentially a wandering, mining hobo. The needs placed upon me by the environment guided my actions and made them purposeful. Without them, at best I was an Egyptian pharaoh building pyramids to stave off ennui.
Putting on my Mr. Rogers vest, I thought, there's a life lesson here. Doesn't suffering fulfill the same role in life as in Minecraft? Need is the catalyst for most of our great works, or, more tritely, necessity is the mother of invention. Necessity is the patron of man's technological prowess, that much is obvious, but what other effects does it have? We would likely not group together as much and form looser social and political bonds. Family ties would disappear if children could fend for themselves as soon as they spawned. Josef Pieper wrote that how a culture used it's leisure time defined it, but it's difficult to appreciate leisure when you have no real work. Art and philosophy would certainly be extinct.
One of my favorite quotations (da Vinci, I think) is that art dies from freedom. Any great work is the result of working within constraints, be it meter for Ovid or physics to Imhotep. Such is it in life where we only weave the grandest tapestries through the greatest trials.
 
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Saw Theodicy, came for Leibniz, left semi-satisfied. I am not convinced that this blog is the best of all possible blogs. 4/5 
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On June 20 2013 05:15 farvacola wrote:Saw Theodicy, came for Leibniz, left semi-satisfied. I am not convinced that this blog is the best of all possible blogs. 4/5
I am, however, convinced that this reply is the best of all possible replies.
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On June 20 2013 05:15 farvacola wrote:Saw Theodicy, came for Leibniz, left semi-satisfied. I am not convinced that this blog is the best of all possible blogs. 4/5
Ahahahah.
I hope you've read Candide farva !
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On June 20 2013 05:40 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:15 farvacola wrote:Saw Theodicy, came for Leibniz, left semi-satisfied. I am not convinced that this blog is the best of all possible blogs. 4/5 Ahahahah. I hope you've read Candide farva !
Why would he sully his mind with that filth?
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On June 20 2013 06:17 Jerubaal wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 05:40 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 20 2013 05:15 farvacola wrote:Saw Theodicy, came for Leibniz, left semi-satisfied. I am not convinced that this blog is the best of all possible blogs. 4/5 Ahahahah. I hope you've read Candide farva ! Why would he sully his mind with that filth?
Because it's a bit dumb, but very funny :p
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"Suffering" is a poor word; "adversity" is a better one. We need adversity in our lives to give us a goal. That said, looking at our world, I'd say that even though adversity is necessary in life, the ratio is way off. An intelligent designer should give us pain, sure, but only certain kinds of pain. People should be able to have their arms broken, but not suffer from horrifically painful cancers. And there are some sufferings / annoyances that have no real purpose whatsoever. For instance, elephants. Once they get too old, they outlive their teeth and starve to death. It'd be easier to just install a kill-switch in them, so that they drop dead when that would happen. But evolutionarily, there's no reason to waste resources on that.
Minecraft is a game, clearly designed to provide you with a challenge, without being too easy or too hard. But life doesn't seem that way.
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If I were to add to the list of things that seem to crop up repeatedly, thee's a sense that something has...not quite gone right with the world.
You've put yourself in a strange position, though. You can't account for the injustice, so you relegate it to a system in which justice has no meaning, which negates your feeling of injustice in the first place.
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On June 20 2013 06:22 corumjhaelen wrote:Show nested quote +On June 20 2013 06:17 Jerubaal wrote:On June 20 2013 05:40 corumjhaelen wrote:On June 20 2013 05:15 farvacola wrote:Saw Theodicy, came for Leibniz, left semi-satisfied. I am not convinced that this blog is the best of all possible blogs. 4/5 Ahahahah. I hope you've read Candide farva ! Why would he sully his mind with that filth? Because it's a bit dumb, but very funny :p
It only counts if he read it in french XD.
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On June 20 2013 09:55 Salivanth wrote:
"Suffering" is a poor word; "adversity" is a better one. We need adversity in our lives to give us a goal.
I don't buy that, for two reasons:
First, it's like saying "We need air because we have to breathe." or "We have to kill because we must eat." These are not axiomatic truths applicable to all possible intelligent beings, they are specific to our physiology.
Suffering, or the threat of suffering, does motivate and excite us, but it is not the case that all possible intelligent beings would need to be motivated or excited by the threat of suffering. Thus that is no excuse for the existence of suffering.
Second: Do you need the threat of death to motivate you to learn to play the piano?
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On June 20 2013 20:50 Umpteen wrote:
Second: Do you need the threat of death to motivate you to learn to play the piano?
Well I think I need the threat of death to motivate me to finish this essay on time!
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To respond to Umpteen and further respond to Salivanth: You suggest that there is necessary and unnecessary suffering, which seems like an artificial distinction. Most people would describe the unnecessary suffering as the suffering that is out of your control, but that is a moving standard. Ancient starvation is distant malaria is current cancer. Only complete domination of nature and man would end suffering. You also suggest that mere inconvenience could replace suffering. That might work from a utilitarian standpoint (Although it's a bit tautological. If you don't need something you don't need to create a solution. Starvation might occupy a lower priority if it only produced stomach pain instead of death.), but it misses the point that it's the extremes that inspire. This is especially true in the realms of politics, philosophy and art. It's not just about what we make, but about what we are. You cannot be reforged in lukewarmness.
Finally, we've talked an awful lot almost as if suffering was a stimulus purposefully given to us. There's no point to suffering. It's the conditions that must be dealt with. You're right; if we were perfect there would be no suffering.
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but it misses the point that it's the extremes that inspire. This is especially true in the realms of politics, philosophy and art.
You cannot be reforged in lukewarmness.
You're doing it again: making observations that are true of our particular physiology and nature and assuming they are axiomatic, necessarily true for all possible intelligent beings. They are not. Your logic is circular: we need extremes to inspire us because our nature is such that extremes inspire us. We need water to drink because we need to drink water.
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Haha this is a great blog, I have lost most of the last week to minecraft which I just started playing... So addictive. You're right though, I don't see the point in playing anything but survival mode!
edit: Auuuugh I just lost a bunch of my stuff, why god, why??
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EPT
