At its worst, Minecraft reinforces an already predominant worldview in which everything can be reduced down to common-denominator monads–in this case, blocks. An over reliance on rigid, angled, quantifiable ways of being in the world eliminates the equally important soft fuzzy curves of qualitative ambivalence. Martin Heidegger once wrote, “being is not something that can be found in the nature of a table, even if the table were to be broken down to its smallest parts.” On some level, we all know that the world is not actually made of extractable resources (human or ecological) available for guilt-free rape and pillage. Still, for some reason, we choose to see it that way.

¶ 10:34 PM