the mistake

the world is wrong. not because it is violet, although it is, but on a deeper level. even if all the contingent horrors were fixed, even if it were such that they could never happen even in principle, the world would be wrong. it's difficult to pin down exactly what the mistake is. in fact, that's part of it. if it were possible to work out what the root cause of the wrongness was, then we could imagine a world that was okay, but we can't. any world in which we could imagine a world that was okay would be okay itself, and this one isn't. the face of god is hidden from the world.

here is an aspect of the mistake:

suffering cannot be redeemed. this is clearly a bad thing, even if it does also mean that joy cannot be corrupted. but if it were otherwise, if suffering could be redeemed, then there would be situations in which the morally correct course of action would be to cause someone to suffer. this kind of double bind is the characteristic signature of the mistake.