Imagine you live in paradise, everything is available and done the moment you wish for it. You could have everything, do everything, be everything and everywhere you've ever wanted to be by just thinking about it. That would be awful! Not at first because you have lived on earth before and if you keep your experience when going to paradise you would know how much better you have it but this feeling only lasts so long... after a while you'll get sick of having everything right away, you couldn't stand not having to work for things to "achieve" them anymore.
This is a very weird thing to realize and actually seems paradoxical but I've come to notice how it's actually true in an even broader term. People don't want to have other people hand something to them, they want to fight for it, they want to earn it, otherwise it's not rewarding and ultimately not even worth doing anything for. In other words, people need problems.
As meaningless as it might seem in this grand scheme of things, I've come to realize exactly that on my survival Minecraft server - where you'd least expect it, I guess. I've created something close to paradise there, in fact so close that I came to realize exactly what I'm describing here. People get more isolated if they don't have to depend on other people and also they don't really do much of anything anymore either. There are exceptions to this rule but there are very few such people and ultimately they create their own problems to solve, just so they can then overcome those problems. Yes, when starting out, people may have a first day of struggle with mobs and then maybe with staying alive for a couple more days but once that's done, they lose motivation pretty quickly as there are no more problems to solve.
There is no further threat for them, no hurdle to overcome, no problem to solve. After some days or maybe weeks of work, they'll have enough food for months to come, enough money to keep their town alive for months, too and at that point all motivation is out the window and people often feel this sense of pointlessness. It's hard to admit but almost everyone says they want "the world to be a better place" but do others want that? Not in a way where we start killing each other obviously but in a sense of "we need problems in life to feel accomplishment" and "we need limitations in life to be more creative".
The latter is probably something everyone has experienced already. If you are limited in some unforseen ways, you'll come up with the most brilliant and smartest solutions to achieve things anyway. People who have been paralyzed or are disabled in some other way, still find ways to do sports, people who have been limited in early technology have come up with the coolest soundtracks and games of all time that are remarkable to this day. It is where creativity thrives and I don't think there's any way you can deny that.
Back to the Minecraft server, I have also made every hurdle that you could encounter optional. From mobs being harder but dropping more loot to having to explore to get better gear or even adding quests from which you can gain cool items but most people simply don't care cause there is no real motivation anywhere which would make them do these things. They're already in paradise, there's no need to do anything anymore and since that's the case, there's no point in getting more resources or unlocking things even if it might make you "cooler than someone else"!
What I'm saying is "once people have solved every problem, they either start creating their own ones or they just leave."
I think this even translates into the real world. Two examples which might make this clearer.
Example 1: You are born into a rich life, you get everything you could ever ask for. Every wish is granted, every problem has already been solved before you could even think about it.
Example 2: You are born in rough conditions, you have to fight to earn your money, you have to figure out how you'll make it through the next week or even just day. But you eventually make it, you eventually start making enough money to live an acceptable life.
You could quite certainly come up with way more examples still but this is maybe the weirdest one I could think of.
Which of those two give you more of an accomplishment feeling? It's obviously the one where you come from nothing and you rise up despite the bad conditions.
Unfortunately for my Minecraft server this means I will have to try and find smart ways of adding problems, so that people can then think of even smarter ways of solving them, giving them something to work for and a goal to achieve while also leaving the freedom of tackling this problem in different ways.
Maybe when we start understanding this concept, we can also understand why we need problems in life and why people feel so much more rewarded when they get through hard times or why limitations can spark creativity and not just be discouraging.
This article shall mainly be food for thought, not facts or anything but I came to realize this and thought it's worth sharing, so I hope you enjoy that new weird thought I've planted in your brain :)