This is pretty interesting question with potential for self-insight. To my mind, most people living in difficult conditions treat it as a Babylonian labyrinth, as if salvation could be at the next door any moment; this is also why many people are susceptible to “get rich quick” schemes and astrological “remedies” and such—they’ve always known they could be next door to riches and fame and all that, and now they finally were. By contrast, those who view it as an Arabian labyrinth either succumb to learned helplessness via depressive realism, or a select few learn to enjoy the desert itself, knowing things to be out of their control.
In case it isn’t obvious from the above paragraph, my choice would be for the desert labyrinth, if I had to choose. It’s my belief that decision anxiety is one of the greatest sources of pain in our life; so here the choice is between having to choose every day, or once at the beginning—and crucially, the further choices in the Babylonian labyrinth are made with no additional information, so only have the cost of decision anxiety with no benefit of improving the probability of your escape. (Lest this comment get too long, I’ll also mention that the desert labyrinth also brings to mind religion and people’s tendency to believe in Fate or destiny.)
I generally agree, and I am happy you found the discussion interesting :)
In my view, indeed the Babylonian type of labyrinth does promote continuous struggle, or at least multiple points of hope and focus on achieving a breakthrough, while ultimately a majority of the time they won’t lead to anything—and couldn’t have lead to anything in the first place. The Arabian type at least promotes a stable progression, towards an end—although that end may already be a bad one.
Most of the time we simply move in our labyrinth anyway. And with more theoretical goals it can be said that even a breakthrough is more of a fantasy borne out of the endless movement inside the maze.
This is pretty interesting question with potential for self-insight. To my mind, most people living in difficult conditions treat it as a Babylonian labyrinth, as if salvation could be at the next door any moment; this is also why many people are susceptible to “get rich quick” schemes and astrological “remedies” and such—they’ve always known they could be next door to riches and fame and all that, and now they finally were. By contrast, those who view it as an Arabian labyrinth either succumb to learned helplessness via depressive realism, or a select few learn to enjoy the desert itself, knowing things to be out of their control.
In case it isn’t obvious from the above paragraph, my choice would be for the desert labyrinth, if I had to choose. It’s my belief that decision anxiety is one of the greatest sources of pain in our life; so here the choice is between having to choose every day, or once at the beginning—and crucially, the further choices in the Babylonian labyrinth are made with no additional information, so only have the cost of decision anxiety with no benefit of improving the probability of your escape. (Lest this comment get too long, I’ll also mention that the desert labyrinth also brings to mind religion and people’s tendency to believe in Fate or destiny.)
I generally agree, and I am happy you found the discussion interesting :)
In my view, indeed the Babylonian type of labyrinth does promote continuous struggle, or at least multiple points of hope and focus on achieving a breakthrough, while ultimately a majority of the time they won’t lead to anything—and couldn’t have lead to anything in the first place. The Arabian type at least promotes a stable progression, towards an end—although that end may already be a bad one.
Most of the time we simply move in our labyrinth anyway. And with more theoretical goals it can be said that even a breakthrough is more of a fantasy borne out of the endless movement inside the maze.