It has been a long time since I've thought about this, but at the heart of my interest in MMORPGs has always, at least in part, is an idea precisely captured by the above quote: These are worlds made out of the acts of people. Newer MMOs have moved further and further away from this over time, I suppose because it is harder to maintain the changes of so many people and also make a good game that sells... a good game to play, perhaps a good haven from the screaming noise of the internet.

I have always been terribly fascinated by cities for the same reason: to see all the individual human choices that comprise an entire landscape. Not the people themselves, but the results of their many different "acts" all visible and noticeable to varying degrees -- not in a melting pot which simplifies a great ocean of players down to a single shared metric (e.g. Noby Noby Boy, or Splatoon's splatfests) but in a garden or a cemetery, which maintains as much complexity, as much resolution, as is possible.

However, the idea that Alexander presents also captures something I wish I had thought of or internalized earlier: that part of this garden or cemetery is not a mere collection of any acts, but acts which contribute to a living space, here a "living street" but generally a space which is alive.

Starseed Pilgrim's hub world is such a living space; although it is a living space only occupied and built by one person, it is still composed of many human acts, each one made with human purpose, for beauty and/or comfort.

I have made intentionally acerbic space before (Cruel World) and generally fantasized about more along these lines: Worlds full of thieves and betrayals, which some moral players might elect to avoid. Other cruel worlds where living structure could in theory be built but where it was the exception (the beautiful exception), not the norm.

Minecraft is a more beautiful game than any of these ideas. Minecraft worlds are more alive, though a game could be more attuned to living process. It is certainly not the perfect game, or the only possible way to make such a game.

P. xvi
How is living structure to be made by human beings? What kind of human-inspired processes can create living structure?
. . .
In the photograph opposite, . . . we see a case of wonderful life. We see the impact of hundreds of acts, done by different people, making a living street where, rich or poor, people are truly comfortable.

Book two.

This book starts strong. It recaps Book One, and some of the things Alexander writes are so in line with my own 31 unmarked games post-mortem (the game is available, the post-mortem itself is unpublished). Here's what he writes.

P. xiv
I believe that many of these new artifacts and buildings -- including, for instance, the apparently harmless developer-inspired motels of our era or our mass housing projects -- are structures which can be thought, invented, created artificially, but they cannot be generated by a nature-like process at all. . . .

//

I do not agree with Alexander's high-level reasoning for why this is bad (he writes that they "are, structurally speaking, monsters" and implies that they are monsters (i.e. bad) because they are "a type of structure on earth which nature itself could not, in principle, create.")

My perspective is more akin to (a knowing misreading of) this quote from his previous book: "for the sake of our welfare, the world must be made so that it contains, and is built from, living structure." The nature-like process itself, in my mind, is justification enough. We must choose a world which can be built by intuitive human means, because that preserves our agency, our human need to do something meaningful for ourselves and the spaces we inhabit.

I'm looking forward to this book.

End of book one.

The Nature of Order presents more useful information than The Idea of the World and more beautifully, so it is unfortunate that I find myself comparing the two, but the conception of the material of the universe, and the dedication to proving it according to science, is present in both.

It tugs at my mind: Alexander's idea that "living structure is in the very mathematics of space" and Kastrup's that the universe's essence is (literally) one experiencing mind are so similar in their overreach. Both make arguments based on, as Alexander put it at the end of book one, "based on what most people experience as true or real". Kastrup suggests that the only thing we can possibly know for sure is our experience, not the things we experience, but that we experience at all. Alexander roots his perspective in human feeling.

When Alexander writes that "for the sake of our welfare, the world must be made so that it contains, and is built from, living structure", I feel that so deeply in my bones, in my heart. He belies his own motivation whether he knows it or not; he literally says that we must "make" the world contain, we must "make" the world built from, "living structure," "for the sake of our welfare".

My belief is that as humans we are capable of processing information and abstract concepts, but that ideas can hurt us. There are a lot of ideas about how the world works, and about what the world is. These ideas can be both very true and very hurtful. Some of the most true ideas we have are not going to be beautiful, but painful, damaging. The only exception is if we do in fact live in a Ptolemaic paradise after all, where the truest ideas coincide with our most positive emotions. It is my strongly-held belief that we do not.

It seems to me that Alexander, although he is also very interested in discovering truth, wants too much to produce a truth. He writes, and I believe him, that it is "for the sake of our own welfare". His words are meant to communicate that for our own good we must be sure to build a world that suits us, suits our human feelings. His words also tell me that he has constructed a worldview upon this foundation and not upon truth. I agree with him completely. I agree with him so much that it hurts. But knowing this I cannot borrow his worldview; I cannot hold a worldview built upon such a noticeably shaky foundation.

I can only borrow parts of his wisdom. Thank you, Christopher Alexander.

P.444
. . .This is not merely a poetic way of talking. It is a new physical conception of how the world is made and how it must be understood.

P.443
I have tried to suggest --- to prove --- that life is a phenomenon which is more profound than a self-reproducing machine, that it attaches to the very substance of space itself. . . .
I have suggested that living structure lies at the core of all life. This living structure is in the very mathematics of space. . . .
We may say that, for the sake of our own welfare, the world must be made so that it contains, and is built from, living structure.

P.442
     I am proposing a new basis, . . . based on what most people experience as true or real --- it is rooted in observation.
. . . a core of judgement must be found which appeals to the deepest instincts in everyone, . . .

I've arrived at the end of book one. I think I'll make a new thread for book two--I've already got a hold on it at the library.

P.442
. . . the last hundred years in architecture . . . lack . . . a coherent basis which is rooted in common sense, in observation, and which is congruent with human feeling.
. . . modernism, postmodernism, organic architecture, the architecture of the poor, architecture of high technology, critical regionalism --- the different positions [taken by modern architecture] --- have been discussed much as one might discuss the latest clothing fashions [and "not, on the whole, been pursued by experiment, or logical reasoning"].
. . . in the intellectual atmosphere of pluralism, celebrated in the 20th century, it has been easy to say what one believes, but nearly impossible to say what is good or true.

It is why, I suppose; I will avoid falling into the ontological trap of questioning what it is to be blue; my stance is more on the philosophical scope of epistemology in general: why ask why? I asked "why is the sky blue?" and received a bit of mechanistic trivia. "Why" is so simple; we have a single word that allows us to ask for an explanation of phenomenon. The sky is blue. I know this. What is the next piece of knowledge that I need, in order to move in a more useful direction, a better direction. The sky is blue: what do I think of the blue sky?; how is the sky?; who is the sky? which sky is my favourite?

Why is the sky blue?

When I was a kid I remember asking my dad this question, and he explained it to me: the sky is blue because sunlight passing through the atmosphere is refracted. But is that really why?

Why is the sky blue?

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