Tram of Thought: Comic strip about psychology, philosophy, society, engineering, and just life in all its gory glory

Sensible advice

If you feel anxious and lost: first image shows a depressed Triangle-person sitting on the ground. And overwhelmed with doubt: second image shows a Triangle-person fearfully covering their head. Here is what you should do: third image shows a Triangle person holding their boxing guard up, standing next to a tree. Try punching a tree: final image shows the Triangle person punching a blocky piece of the tree trunk out. The severed tree remains hanging in the air, and next to the block there is an exclamation: +1 wood, new recipe unlocked!

If you feel anxious and lost,

And overwhelmed with doubt,

Here is what you should do:

Try punching a tree

+1 wood, new recipe unlocked!

In Minecarft, a seminal open-world crafting game of 2011, a player owns nothing and must build everything up from scratch.

In the early versions of the game, there was no hints or instructions provided, making it somewhat difficult to know what to do. The correct course of action turns out to be punching a tree to obtain the first critical resource of the game: wood.

Since 2011 many other open-world crafting games were released making “punch the tree” into a gaming trope. This first step is somewhat pervasive, making it into a mildly generic life advice (if you play games, at least).

I leave it up to the reader to extract philosophical value from “punch the tree”.

#philosophy #gaming