The Diamond Cage
Minecraft is considered one of the most timeless video games in history. The most basic version of Minecraft has barely changed in over a decade and yet me and the boys still find ourselves making yearly trips online to play it for a while. Its underlying concept is that you mine stuff to craft with, craft stuff to mine with and survive. As humans do, we have found ways to make it millions more complicated than that but, at its core, that is Minecraft. One of the most rare things you can mine in the game is a Diamond. You usually mine your way down to just above ‘ground-level’, and keep digging around until you find it. Now, there are plenty of types of players in this game, but I’m going to talk about two main archetypes here; Those that search solely for diamonds, those that just enjoy the game.
I have a friend who, when we play Minecraft, spends most of his time looking for diamonds. While the rest of us are fucking around, killing each other, and just taking in everything the game has to offer, he’s off in some dark cave mining for diamonds. Sure enough he finds them first, then hides them in secret caves. Us being the true friends we are, we eventually find it and kill him before robbing his cave and burning down his house. He then proceeds to leave the game. It happens so much that it’s practically the Circle of Minecraft for us. But my point is that while all of us are having fun with each other and doing a bunch of different stuff, he only cares about mining for those diamonds. I imagine he plays the game with much more purpose than we do, but we get more laughs out of it. There’s a big difference between video games and life because video games are designed to not have boring, bad or depressing moments (unless a Creeper blows you up post-diamond), but I believe the principle still largely applies.
Now imagine you are the sort of player that really wants to find diamonds — whatever your motivations are. So much so, that you tell yourself that you have to find some diamonds before any other player, otherwise you will stop playing Minecraft as a whole. Maybe even quit playing Xbox (Yes, Xbox. I don’t want to hear Sony army raving about their controllers or God of War). That sort of mentality is often the most surefire way to get you to the precious jewels faster than any other player. But there’s two downfalls: A) You’d likely play the game with more fear and instability than your mates, and B) If you don’t find those diamonds first, it’s not looking good.
This sort of archetype is one I come across quite often in Oxford. The type of individual who ties their self-esteem to their academic success, or career prospects, or ability to play competitive sports. Pitfall A) is one we see more immediately. Students who hinge their self-worth to their academic success often get dragged by their insecurities into the library, where they’ll be studying for hours on end in fear of failure. You might be thinking “isn’t that just solid grind?”. The two can generally look the same (and there’s certainly a case to be made that they are cut from the same cloth). But I’ll lay out where I think the two generally diverge.
In my most recent Oxford term, I tried to kickstart a business alongside my degree and become a ‘unipreneur’. I became so obsessed with this unipreneur thing that I lived in a constant state of anxiety, where if I was not doing something to further either my business or my studies, then I was pretty much wasting my life. It put me into a state of analysis paralysis, whereby I spent so much time ruminating on what work I had ahead of me that I rarely got enough work done. It affected me academically, it affected the business, and most of all, it affected me. You see, tying my self-esteem to my ability to find diamonds meant that when I couldn’t find my diamonds, it caused me a great deal of mental struggle. Now, my case was relatively tame, as I have a loving family and great support system around me, which illustrates a point that I will later get to. For now, let me point out that there are much more extreme examples. People I have met in Oxford who have verged on psychological breakdown and suicide when they see consistent failure in the thing they hinge their self-esteem on. ‘Grind’ diverges from an unhealthy obsession on one thing: Failure.
You see, when the diamond-focused individual finds a batch of diamonds in life, people normally hear about and see it, whether in person or via social media etc. Their community applauds them for their success, and application of this mindset over a long period of time can bring about long bouts of success for individuals. Long bouts of success often bring about long bouts of love from the community, and a healthy sense of self-esteem. The singular focus on diamonds can increase the chance of success in an individual so much that they rarely see major failure. We then take this mindset and applaud it, put it on a pedestal, and chalk it down to something like ‘sheer will’ or ‘determination’. It’s exhibited in shonen anime, where the main character is usually portrayed to have some intense drive for a goal that pushes them beyond all doubt and failure and brings them eventually to some form of success or attainment. The only thing is, shonen anime suffers from survivorship bias, because shonen anime where the main character fails in their ultimate goal doesn’t exist. They just keep striving until the job is done.
Unfortunately, the human psyche often does not operate under the undying will that shonen protagon ists do. It is not uncommon at all for a human to fail at the thing they tie their self-esteem to, leaving heavy psychological impact. One can argue that whatever problems arise were always present in some form, but that’s not our topic of conversation here. The topic is how individuals who focus for months — perhaps even years — on finding diamonds are persistently at risk of psychological breakdown or a severe lack of self-esteem if they see too much failure, whether it is in their control or not. The mentality which brings so much ‘success’ leads you to the diamond cage.
Life is not all about diamonds
Some of us choose to drill down to collect that single diamond just for its rarity. Because almost no-one has it. Because it proves we have reached our potential. Because we love it and are obsessed with it. I think that’s great — society needs those kinds of people as much as it needs people who do absolutely nothing. But the world requires balance and, for many of us, life does too. And what that looks like in this scenario is deriving your self-esteem from multiple sources. In the words of Mark Manson, it’s choosing what to give a fuck about. It’s important to note here that we have to give a fuck about something. My point is not that we shouldn’t hinge our self-esteem on anything because we’re always going to derive our self-esteem from something. It’s like a bat’s need for echolocation — our brain sends out signals to the world around us to see where we’re at and what we’re doing. You can choose what waves you pay attention to, just make sure there’s multiple waves and not just one.
For example, I currently hinge my self esteem largely on the following things: My commitment to my family & close friends in terms of being present and loving, my ability to discipline myself in some senses, my commitment to working hard on personal projects that I care about, my commitment to opening the door for those that come after me, my ability to never be afraid to ask questions to people who I’m curious to speak to, my skill at FIFA, etc. The list constantly changes and it is never exhausted, but the idea is that it covers most of what I care about, and I know roughly how much the things on the list matter to me (or at least how they’re ranked). The upside of this is that it is an unlikely event that all of these things in my life go wrong, or I am not working towards being better in them. When I’m not working so hard on personal projects, I remind myself that I’m still doing a good job of being a brother, son, uncle, friend. When I’m at an event and I get too scared to ask a question, I remind myself that there will be other events, and that I’m still doing alright in other areas. Hinging my self-esteem on the weighted average of things that are important to me lets me keep a much more stable mental state. Needless to say, there are countless other things that go into a stable mental state like luck, life circumstances, sense of intrinsic worth, WiFi connection. Some things are in our control, some are not. I’m only pointing out one area that I feel is important in this article.
I have mentioned before that life is not one uniform race, and when I speak of balance I mean balance in the sense that you’re all sorts of people. To carry on the video game analogy, you have all sorts of attributes relating to your life. Humour, hope, who you choose to be friends with, kindness, ability to do wrong, etc. All of these different attributes and more make up you as a person. Don’t hinge your entire identity on some arbitrary metric, not even something like how happy you are. There is no core to a human. Many of us believe in souls, but I think of a soul more as an essence that flows through you than something concentrated. At the very root, there is nothing you can point at and say ‘you are that’, but rather you’re the accumulation of many different aspects.
And so in sum, you don’t have to hinge your worth on one aspect of yourself, because you’re all sorts of people. Don’t play Minecraft only to find diamonds, and more importantly, don’t hinge your value as a Minecraft player solely on your ability to find diamonds. Don’t make your whole life and identity depend on that one thing. Find what is important to you, what different places you feel you can and want to spend time in. Provide value in. Improve in. Many of us are guilty of the one-track mindset, and that’s okay — we’re all human. We fixate on small things for periods of time and dig our heads into that sand. Then after a while we learn to pull our heads out and take a long, refreshing breather and remind ourselves that there’s a whole world out there to enjoy. Take this article as advice that you can’t often control if you dig your head into the sand, but try and try again to pull yourself out once you’re in there. Remind yourself that it’s okay to focus all on one thing, but you’re always more than that. I hope you’ll find that it gives you a lot more peace ❤
