Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River when the King of Chu sent two high officials to him. They said, “The king wishes to entrust you with the affairs of his realm.”
Zhuangzi kept hold of his fishing rod and did not turn around. He said, “I have heard that in Chu there is a sacred turtle that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth, enclosed in a box, and stored in the ancestral temple.
“Now, would this turtle rather have died and left its bones behind to be honored, or would it rather be alive, dragging its tail through the mud?”
The two officials replied, “It would rather be alive, dragging its tail through the mud.”
Zhuangzi said, “Then go away. I too will drag my tail through the mud.”
This is pure escapism. Numbing yourself to the burden of being. Likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis.
The truth is that after the brief initial relief of excusing yourself from being anything at all, you'll end up in a deep depression. It's a naive and immature fantasy.
Remove all electronics from your life, they are a constant nervous system stimulator that has prevented you from truly relaxing into a state of repair. Then introduce responsibilities into your life, start small. We are wired to be needed, wanted, useful, accountable, social. You're just stressed out.
Not sure at all you actually read the piece. Your responses about having a job or inconvenience or expectation seem entirely unrelated.
The text does not, for instance, encourage not having a job. It also does not encourage being nothing at all. Being nothing special is quite different.
I often ask myself if i can go to a small town and live an anonymous life. Its my scoring system for personal pride/ego.
Does such an anonymous life stop me from inventing things or think about stuff deeply. I don't think so,..
> do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
Escapism. You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff. Our bodies are always aiming to relax, because conserving calories is an extremely effective survival method. We are hardwired to do nothing, in order to escape the burden of instead doing something.
The extreme majority of people don’t have some secret massive project they want to do and are weirdly choosing not to. There’s only one way to interpret this.
Nope, they might just want to clock out from work at 5pm and go ride their bike until sunset without giving a single shit about anything but the fresh air. Or go home and walk their kid to the park. Or throw a ball around the yard with the dog.
If I didn’t enjoy yard care, I wouldn’t have a yard or I’d xeriscape or gravel + trees, or something. Laundry’s kind of a drag, mostly the folding part. Most of the time I enjoy cooking and tidying up afterwards; when I’m not in the mood I’ll do takeout or throw something from the freezer in.
I’m not sure what you’re saying overall? Is it that those things you’ve listed are what stops people from having enjoyable lives where they do what they want?
They are just examples. Adults with responsibilities, especially with familes, have really moved beyond living "without giving a single shit about anything." The only adults I know who live like that are homeless. I guess they are the ultimate real-life NPCs
If everyone would be ready to jump in and help you with some revolutionary project you should really bother to figure out what that project is going to be.
They are not ready to help because normal life is designed to be absurdly complicated, time consuming, constraining and draining.
The irony is that the solution is for people to take up massive projects that address the many angles of needless complexity [again]
Your body is, maybe, but we're not all the same. Making my body sit still and do nothing requires sustained, focused attention; action is the comfort state, and idleness the burden.
Meanwhile, my idleness is so ingrained that sometimes I can't even make myself do the things I WANT to do, like load up a game that I've been wanting to play.
And I'm just tired...all the time. I do nothing and still I'm exhausted.
Do you know why? It might be worth figuring out. For me is is mild ME/CFS but for you maybe not (a good tell for CFS is if doing any exercise at all e.g. 1km walk makes you feel rough later. Not delayed muscle soreness or a stitch but more like a flu say).
So many other things are possible like iron, thyroid, sleep apnea, ADHD, depression or burnout, long COVID, tropical illness. Maybe more.
Finally it is totally morally OK not to be a 100% productive worker bee. A "cure" is not necessary but might be worth rabbit holing if you desire and have the energy.
That is pretty typical of depression, especially if you can't make yourself do activities you normally would enjoy or you stop feeling as much enjoyment from them
Unfortunately I have no advice for it but I wish you good luck. We're all struggling lately
It also ignores the real stresses imposed by society on ordinary people. The point of an NPC is stasis. The walking signpost gives you the same information, or the weapon shop sells you the same broad sword, whether you take 3 hours or 203 hours to get to that point in the game. The NPC has no inner life; it’s code that only exists when it is doing a job.
In the real world, stasis gets you killed. Someone is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe millions) to find out if you can be made to pay more in rent, accept higher air fares or hotel fees, work longer hours, or accept lower wages. You can’t choose not to be part of the war. You either fight and accept intolerable stress, or you don’t fight and you still accept intolerable stress.
I don't interpret it to that extreme. I think it's more about shutting out noise and acting along a thread that keeps you pleased without interference from e.g. brainrot media or an over-demanding job.
Arguably a reason most everyone found the early internet/web so awesome: it wasn't as commoditized into feeds and platforms. You were an adventurer on an undiscovered planet, a secret life beside the boring real one and just did your thing. It's how most of us ended up here, anyhow.
Who is this “we” you speak of? I see this word thrown around a lot here. Never use “we” in a sentence unless you’re referring to another individual directly. It’s beyond arrogant to assume you have the authority to speak for all others.
> Likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis
Maybe, but that could also be because of autism, trauma or some other disability
And maybe the author just wants to feel heard, get others to comment on their experiences, be vulnerable in public (which btw can be pretty stressful too), and connect with their community
That’s a stretch and in realm of pure speculation.
A blacksmith is useful for society and for himself. It’s a profession and it’s not anything. OP’s point is that profession compared to chasing dragons. I’m tired of chasing dragons and very happy focusing on my own life.
a low stress tolerance and a highly sensitized stress reaction can often look the same. If someone is hurt repeatedly in the same way, they will react when a stimuli that reminds them of it comes near. Similarly, people who are constantly stressed out often develop things like "learned helplessness", where they are incapable of solving their problems because they've failed, been rejected, or told no so many times that they stop trying.
That can happen with a high stress tolerance too, it just needs to be pushed past the breaking point. Some of us have gone through harrowing experiences and the NPC lifestyle is one coping mechanism among many others.
"Don't give a fuck" - Ignore your feelings. Ignore your thoughts. Ignore others. Exist in some detached unalive state divorced from the human condition. Because it's easier. Oh and the monks did it. It's also easier to die, that's the end of that path of thought.
It really isn't that though. If you're disparaging normal ass people with jobs and families and lives as "NPCs" you probably should try ignoring your thoughts and feelings a bit because they're probably part of a some low level grinding psychosis.
To make the most facile counterpoint - the reason the Skyrim blacksmith doesn't care if the main character slays dragons is because they weren't programmed to. There aren't consequences either way.
To the extent that this post is meant to be inspiring, it only works if you're an NPC in a static world that has no real consequences - where you actually can live your life in a static loop because nothing will change.
When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion), they are looking at it from the point of view of a player, someone outside the game who understands that the NPC is scripted (this is a silly and egotistical way of looking at the world). This post is looking from it from the point of view of the NPC instead, as if that was a living entity one could be.
IMO, people using NPC as an insult have it backwards. What they mean is that you receive tasks and ideas from them to carry out for cash. That's what players do.
The blacksmith tasks the protagonist to get a Dragon's Teeth or whatever and pay 100 Golds in return(never played TES, sorry if this isn't a good example). The player has no control over the blacksmith; the blacksmith is in full control of the situation. The blacksmith is an NPC. The protagonist is the player. But then some thinks the blacksmith must be the player, I suppose. The fact that this sometimes seem to happen almost puzzles me.
right, this comes close to rejecting the frame, which I think you could fairly do.
viewing npc as a category of person is inherently an ego driven, narcissistic way of looking at things. It is a viewpoint that lacks a theory of mind.
This essay implicitly supposes that the npc has a mind + motivations and that those motivations are more important to the npc than the player character. I'd extend it to say that if you are an npc you are a player character; you're just in a different game. Village Blacksmith Simulator, where you make horshoes, fend off pickpockets and sometimes a hero's dragon fight flattens your shop and you start over.
The flaw is assuming the player character is always the same.
Ironically the people who view others as NPC (and say so in a disparaging way) are likely more one dimensional themselves. I think you're spot on with the narcissism viewpoint.
> I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion)
Probably not totally relevant, but a several years ago I was out for one of my best friend's very low-key bachelor party (just a few friends/family members bar-hopping, no strip clubs). We went to a bar that was recommended by one of us and the dude who greeted us was so insanely charismatic that I assumed he was someone my buddy knew and was this later joiner to the party or something. I asked my friend, "Do you know this guy?" and, you kinda have to know his humour, but he replied, "No, he's an NPC." He was not insulting the guy (in fact I think he may have even said "non-playable character" in full) just saying, "Nope, not with us," and ya... I laughed... like, really hard. Needed recovery time.
That made chuckle! Not to the point of needing recovery time, but still. Thank you for sharing the story. I can’t help you get to the point you were looking for, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
"I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion)"
It's a great insult, because it is usually used to describe someone whose viewpoint is basically a brainwashed and braindead pre-programmed one (either through upbringing or other things) and clearly demonstrating a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
It’s funny, because one might argue that a lack of awareness of, or empathy for the fact that other people also have thoughts and autonomy also demonstrates a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
Right, and there is very good reason you need to care about a lot of things. That Dragon will burn your village and kill you. You better be concerned about that - you will die.
Your life isn't scripted. If have the option to not ignore the dragon. You can work with your town to setup a watch and places to flee to when the dragon is coming (even if only 50% make it that is an improvement). You can as a town fund adventures to kill the dragon. You can move to a town where there are no dragons. There are probably other options that I haven't thought of.
You should not ignore politics. You need to understand the trade offs. You should plan for what is happening. Russia is at war with Ukraine - things like that can happen to you as well. You should understand enough to have an informed decision on how much to prepare... Maybe you need to build a bomb shelter, maybe not, but you should know in time to build one.
This sort of a anxious hyper-vigilance is exactly the sort of main character bs you should let go of though. Spend some time with your kids or whatever. You actually can't plan and prepare for a hypothetical war with russia.
If it's me against Russia, no, I can't plan and prepare. - ALONE. Ukraine spent several years after 2014 planning for another war with Russia and there had reasonable success despite being in a apparently much worse situation. Ukraine is a large enough collection of people that they could usefully plan and prepare.
Which is part of my point. Don't live alone. You live in a community of people. You need to engage with your community to prepare for that dragon.
That doesn't mean don't go play with your kids or whatever. Do that too. But also prepare for life in ways that you can prepare because you live with other people
> To make the most facile counterpoint - the reason the Skyrim blacksmith doesn't care if the main character slays dragons is because they weren't programmed to. There aren't consequences either way.
In the actual game, NPCs do care, in fact they often won't shut up about it. They just don't let it affect their lives, which is the point the OP is making.
> When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
When such a disaster strikes a village those are often scripted events that do change the loops of the NPCs previously inhabiting the village. They are programmed to adapt to a new cycle of rebuilding the village or even assisting the main character in dealing with the threat.
It's funny that the assumption is the NPCs don't care about anything that happens in the world when there are games with NPCs engaging in entire rebellions against their oppressors. It's just that NPCs don't care beyond their immediate objectives being fulfilled. Once the rebellion succeeds and the tyrant is overthrown most of them just settle back into their usual loop.
In Hades, yes. Vanishingly few of us actually control our fates or societies even to a small extent. The modern tendency to think like we do is a form of mania. By indulging it, we damage the only control we really have, our relative health and peace of mind.
Pretending that you don't have a part to play in the fate of society is escapism at best, and learned helplessness at worst. Democracy is explicitly a system that functions off of the sum of individual participation, and if the quality of that participation is poor it will produce bad outcomes even barring subversion by other powers. Pessimism like yours cedes control entirely to those who would take it through undemocratic means, and the result will be a markedly worse world.
You don’t have a part to play of any value to anyone outside of your direct orbit. Nothing you can do will impact history. You will be forgotten shortly after your death. There is no afterlife, you’re nothing more special than a bug other than being complex enough to think that you are.
Just live your life however you want, you only get one, and it’ll be brief.
I'll admit I'm assuming that you are writing with the intent for your words to be read, understood, and integrated in some capacity into other minds. That is, you are engaging in communication. The contents of your communication are an argument, advice to think about and participate in the world in a certain way. Perhaps this was a total accident, though, and you didn't mean to convince anyone of anything, and were merely pressing keys at random, in which case I apologize for reading intent into your actions.
How do you square this opinion with the fact that people actually do get voted into office and enact policies with grand repercussions on history and society?
Political movements can certainly be an important factor of modern power given the right instigators, but transferring the importance to oneself is, again, damaging mania.
The example is particularly bad because in Skyrim the blacksmith actually does react when a dragon arrives (in one of the villages where the blacksmith is on an exterior cell) and can actually be hurt by the dragon.
We're building AI so that it can take care of the dragon, as well as run the economy and do everything else for us. I think soon the only viable option will be to live the NPC life.
I think NPC is the wrong terminology here - everyone should be the main character in their life - to have meaning and agency. But I think the problem arises in how 'main character' is defined and expressed - having the idea that you're supposed to 'do great things' and live this larger-than-life, life.
You don't have to save all the rhinos, defeat every poverty, slay every social cause or overthrow every tyranny. If anything it's arrogance to assume you can, or even should - that your specific brand of saving anything is even correct.
If you look at most people that do well for themselves and have good lives, they live narrow focused lives in domains they care about. They're very much the main characters of their own lives, but also recognize there are other characters running around doing their own things as well.
I think using the term NPC would be more apt if you're referring to someone that's purely on autopilot and not making any effort to ensure that they're leading a life that is meaningful to them.
That’s the best part! We’re all NPCs in other people’s stories _and_ the main character in ours.
You can do and be absolutely anything or anyone you want. Just gotta bear the consequences and that’s it.
Wanna live a homely life surrounded by loved ones? Go do it! Nobody is stopping you. Wanna galivant around the world having adventures with no roots? You can!
And when you meet a local npc bartender on your adventures, you’re just another rando tourist npc. It’s great
Commented elsewhere in the thread before reading the comment (a terrible habit of mine) and I fully agree. The way I explained it to my daughter is this:
Every snowflake is unique but snow is still just snow.
Life’s funny that way. You can’t predict what an individual will do and yet predicting what a crowd will do is so easy we have entire engineering and social disciplines based on manipulating crowd behavior.
In The Republic, Plato tells a story of a man who briefly died, visited the afterlife, and came back to life. According to the man, people would be reborn after dying, but they got to choose what they would be reincarnated as. Some people chose to be rich kings, some chose to be fierce animals. Odysseus, a legendary king known for his wisdom, chose to be reborn as an ordinary man.
In Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, the main character George is famously frustrating because he doesn't do much. Bad things happen to him and he basically just lets them. He thinks his psychiatrist is totally evil yet keeps going back. He has a pitiful lack of control over his life. He doesn't seem to want control, which is the worst part. He isn't super happy, and you could take that as the main point, but I don't.
even George, perhaps the most boring and least reactive person you've ever read about or met, would just laugh at the goal of being "entirely unfazed by everything happening around you." Even he falls in love, experiences great joy and brutal heartbreak, finds his own small ways of making an impact, makes peace with difficult things. For a character who supposedly does nothing important, he does a hell of a lot.
i am not sure why people are interpreting so extremely.
the gist of the post is "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to." and "the goal is to just do your own thing.".
it is not "never let anything affect you ever, then die".
> the gist of the post is "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to." and "the goal is to just do your own thing.".
So basically, a main character life, the life of a player. A player can even choose not to play the game, and it isn't their whole world.
The reason this post is incendiary is due to their overwrought metaphor which ultimately works quite poorly, if at all.
while it's not how i would have written it, i am struggling to understand many of the interpretations being posted in the comments. it's like people skipped over all the lines that say (or imply) "just do your own thing", and got immediately hung up by the use of "npc".
I'm just trying to explain why people are posting what they are posting. E.g. "likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis" stems partly from the immature writing style.
But given that you are posting passive-aggressive "okay?"s to my explanation while purporting that you don't understand the comments while alluding to the notion that you do understand exactly why...makes me think you are just a troll, or worse.
not trolling, just found it to be an odd thing to add on. none of the other comments that i read at the time of my comment, except yours, brought up the age of the author.
i typically try to avoid using age as an insult. i find it rude. you don't, apparently.
(out of curiosity, what is the "worse" thing you think i am?)
I mean, the example they give is pickpocketing the blacksmith and the blacksmith just doesn’t care. So, never let anything affect you is kind of exactly what the author is proposing.
They try to reign it back in at the end with “goal is to do your own thing” but the examples given, and really NPCs in general, are the antithesis to that.
Ironically, the NPCs are designed to do exactly what they are supposed to with no free will at all. I have programmed you to do this, and thus you shall.
If this viewpoint resonates with you, I highly recommend the Japanese film Perfect Days.
It is about a man living a very simple life as a public cleaner in Tokyo, and after watching it (it’s been three times now) I have the desire to throw away 99% of my unnecessary possessions and go work a simple job as a barista or gardener.
> drive a boring car... have a boring job. do nothing after work...
This just sounds like mental exhaustion as mentioned. The internet exposes us to thousands of opinions on how to live, so those terminally online get information overload and analysis paralysis. I don't think the answer is to give up trying or just settle into a boring life. Then people write these snarky blogs as a coping mechanism. Personally, I think navel gazing and these shocking, screw-the-world articles are just ways to live comfortably inside your head. It's addictive to write shocking, against-the-current stuff and get reactions, and it feels like you are affecting your life. But most of the time I think it's performing for yourself.
Adding the 1001th random opinion and being a hypocrite: go offline more, interact with real people and you'll realize life is actually fine and enjoyable. Natural dopamine and serotonin. It's easy to fall into anhedonia or apathy as a safety response to information overload. Having a boring, soul-crushing job on purpose is not good advice, nobody should intentionally spend huge parts of their years on Earth like that. Making your life enjoyable through effort in the real world is not a bad thing.
This post got the definition of NPC entirely backwards.
NPC = follows the rules exactly like they’re programmed to. That means not thinking outside the box, ignoring gut feelings, adhering to a routine, consumerism and generally politically unimaginative.
The blacksmith from Skyrim is a great example because along comes a player, puts a bucket on your head and steals all your stuff without any complaints.
i think have a bit of an understanding of where OP is coming from. lately, the grind doesn't stop, and the quality and cost of life are inverting at an alarming pace. and all this time we're being told being the main character means having billions of dollars, be looksmaxxed, have a million friends, and anything less means you're poor and worthless.
this is an incredibly stressful time to be alive. i think i'm moderately ambitious and so i grind at my early stage startup and enjoy the work most days. but sometimes i also think it'd be nice to just have a bakery in a middle-sized town somewhere without thinking too much about politics. and just living my life with its ups and downs, but without the daily / hourly emergencies that come with being on the internet nowadays.
NPC's have no agency. They're lines in the main character's story and otherwise forgotten.
There is a negative karma to putting this kind of nihilistic message out into the world. Obviously everyone should shoot for the stars, not the dirt. The goal is to give one's life meaning and purpose. If the job is a snooze, adjust your aim. Treasure your family and start your own if you are able. Life will be infinitely more interesting and meaningful when you take on that special burden.
Starting a family has its rewards but it greatly limits your choices, the risks you're willing to take, and the things you're able to try when you don't have responsibility for anyone else. Life becomes pretty narrowly defined and predictable when you have a family, not infinitely more interesting.
That was a good read, thanks! I think one thing the blog post perhaps misses is that although humans are nice throughout the movie, we are supposed to view a lot of their best behavior near the end as part of their "awakening", the realization that there is more to life than just pleasure and that it'd be great to get to live on earth again. It's not as incoherent as it seems, though there is definitely still room to wonder whether the protagonists are actually the villains.
Dated someone who said this early on, talking about how they wanted to be kept like a housecat and grow plants. I don't like saying things gave me "the ick" but... wow.
As the type of person with a more "life is like playing pokemon, if you make an effort to talk to everyone, you'll have more fun and they'll help in unexpected ways" vibe, I just don't get it.
In my twenties, I had decided that I didn’t want to have side projects or a job that followed me home. I wanted to just go to work, come home and be.
Shortly after I made that commitment, there was a notice published that I was starting a typography magazine.
I had talked publicly about doing this, but it was something that I had planned on doing with my then-girlfriend who subsequently broke up with me and I decided that I would shelve it. But thanks to that notice, I started getting inquiries and I ended up doing the typography magazine anyway. I’m glad for the experience of having done it, less so for the negative impact it had on my finances for the next decade.
Funnily I find the OP's thoughts to very much define what a main character is.
An NPC is given a role and identify and they are bound by it forever.
The main character chooses what they want. Whatever that is. But they exercise agency and their own will to choose their reality and what they wish to do and not do. What they wish to care and not care about.
The OP is not an NPC. I believe the OP wants to live a less stressful life. The OP is pulled towards a simple life that does not involve flashy things or high status (this is my interpretation).
Which in today's status signal fueled world may feel like being an NPC. But in my opinion, it is the exact opposite.
My daughter plays games like crazy. She plays a lot of them, started with MineCraft when she was young. I think they are all fantasy games.
She has defined a life she wants to live and is scarily detailed. It is sort of an NPC lifestyle. I believe she is inspired by the games she play.
She might change but for now she seems have a clean outline of how things will be, work, home, and everything else like a very finite number of friends, the things to own, no brand logos (or should be really muted/subtle), etc.
This is viable option if you are generally okay with the way the world around you works - if you live in a safe place with a good economy and a fair, well-functioning government. Unfortunately this is not the situation for a lot of people.
This was always my biggest nightmare: to become an NPC. I always feel like I am capable of more than what I am currently doing, and I am trying to do more. Life is short. I want to die knowing I had a great impact on the world and I did what I could, not as an NPC.
You can write a good story about anything. Slice of life stories are great. A peaceful zen character can be a main character. A hard working craftman could be a main character. A man or woman taking care of their sick partner or child and barely having time for anything else is a main character. The whole trend of using the term NPC is a very egotistical framing in the first place, but if you care you can be living any type of lifestyle and be a main character. Culture is very relative, people think they're the main character because they act like a dip shit on a live stream and people watch them. In a lot of cultures people like that would not be seen as enviable at all. Its all pretty arbitrary.
Aren't we all just NPCS in each other's lives? Accepting that you're an NPC is just stating the obvious. Idk about y'all but I'm tryna get to at least side character status lol.
I feel like this take is for a more passive form of stoicism. No you don't have to care about what is going on around you, but you do need to somewhat engage with your life to solve problems, pay bills and take care of loved ones.
Confusing perspective and doesn’t achieve what I think they were trying to say.
I get from this “you cannot have expectations of me, because I’m an NPC, so stop the judgement because I cannot change what I am. It’s in my programming.”
Like, not really anything else. I cannot handle failing to meet expectations (regardless of where they come from, who is seemingly imposing them, or really anything related to expectations at all) so I just absolve myself from having any.
Living is not the same thing as filling an empty space in a game. An NPC is just that - add some extra background staff so that a city feels live-like.
You are alive. Go live.
NPCs immitate life, but very pourly. Do not take them as an inspiration.
Don't try to ignore the world around you as it is the direct opposite of a game world which is static.
Real life is dynamic, changing and if you behave as an NPC for a long time, you are going to have a bad time eventually
Agency is a reason for me to arise each day and work at my goals. Without goals, or agency, I may head for depression (been there, done that).
If I do not see progress being made, I know that if I do not change what I am doing (or measure in smaller increments) again, I may head for depression.
Even crappy odds are an acceptable challenge, when I compare to what I imagine is an NPC/don't give a hoot outlook.
OP should read Bhagavad Gita. The ancient Indian have talked about this for a very long time. Ashtavakra Gita have also talked about realizing that oneself is pure observer. It is a deep, deep book. You either get it or don't, unfortunately.
Arjun is not detached. He is doing battle. In fact he is doing the battle he is supposed to be doing even though his relatives are aligned on the other side.
The whole lesson is to exercise your agency to achieve what you are supposed to be doing, despite what's happening.
> The whole lesson is to exercise your agency to achieve what you are supposed to be doing, despite what's happening.
This is interesting because this the EXACT opposite of my reading. Arjuna in fact is not acting on his agency; he despises going to war. However, Shiva (I think) pretty much tell him to let go of his ego. He just needs to do what he has to do. It is his duty to go to war and so he shall. It is a lesson to live life given whatever it is, to not ask what could and should have been, but to just live it. At the limit, you will "die" and become an "animal", "you" will be reduced to pure consciousness, no longer pondering what could and should be, then and only then can you escape the wheel of dharma.
I saw two people with NPC tshirts today (Chinese tech scene). This resontaes quite well with the notion of tangping or laying flat: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589
Always a good idea to pick up the book and read for yourself in context, but for those who might pass on that opportunity:
“Make it your goal to life a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others.”
I do agree with this attitude, but the epithet of "being an NPC" is about having someone else--the media, your tribe, your church--governing your behavior without you thinking about it.
It's not about being a main character in the world--it's about being a main character in your own life.
The key is consciously making that choice. What people don't want is to be forced into a way of living by others. People can accept what they have a hand in discovering and choosing.
>when you stop caring about being the main character, you finally get to just live your life.
I am not sure there is a standard definition of "main character." In literature, at least, there are countless main characters who lead very introspective lives.
Its pretty common in Japanese and Chinese culture to want to live an NPC life -- characterized mainly by being completely ordinary and living a relatively simple life without much excitement, and finding joy in small pleasures.
All well and good if your lifestyle stays the same... But what if it keeps getting worse?
Some people want the whole pie, some people want a certain sized slice and some people want nothing.
Some will fight to the death trying to get the whole pie.
Some will fight to the death trying to get or keep their slice.
Those who want nothing have nothing to fight for and over time will lose everything to those who want things and who will fight to get what they want.
I'm definitely in the middle camp. I don't want much but if I couldn't get that, my existence would not be worthwhile. There would be nothing to live for except revenge perhaps.
Even in stories about a poor fisherman who is content with his life; he still owns a boat, a net, a shack, has a wife, a couple of kids maybe. Even the poor fisherman is a hypocrite if he says he needs nothing.
The poor fisherman is richer than me in a material way because he was able to get everything he needed fullfilled for a low cost which he could afford... Probably the exact same things as I need but I can't get those same things for that low cost because my place in the world is different. I am literally forbidden by laws, regulations and moral obligations and commitments to obtain those same basic things and those basic rights which the poor fisherman has.
Rich people look at a happy poor fisherman and think "He is happy because he doesn't need material things."
I look at a happy poor fisherman and I think "He is happy because he can afford every material thing that is required for a happy moderate life in his society." And I can't afford the same.
Doing the things you care about instead of the things you are induced to care about, that is something I agree with. However, what is there to live for, if I am strictly unaffected by the world around me?
JFC, some of ya’ll should take this advice. The article is basically saying focus on your own life, don’t worry so much about what other people are doing and enjoy the mundanity of life. People are acting like he’s telling you to just sit and stare at the ceiling.
>be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck? have a boring job. do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
Obviously. People have reasons for buying cool cars or socializing after work. But if you don't have a reason to do something aside from a vague idea of "this is just what people do", then doing it anyway would be considered NPC behavior. You're just blindly following programming without even understanding the purpose of that behavior.
Instead of striving to shut your brain off, you should strive to actually use it. Think about what desires people have that cause them to take those actions. List them out. Do any of those desires apply to you? If not, then go ahead and stay home.
I think this stretches the "NPC" term beyond its utility. It’s a cute little insult, but once you redefine it to mean “ignore status games, stop worrying about what other people are doing, and live according to your own priorities,” you’re basically just restating advice that’s been around for millennia. That’s Stoicism, Buddhism, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, etc. I’m not sure this new metaphor is adding anything.
Not living your life through the lens of third-party audience. I think lots of people (including myself) sometimes view their life not through their own eyes, but through the imagined gaze of some third-party audience. Maybe it's not about being the main character or NPC, but just realizing that there is no movie, no audience. There's just you and the people you interact with.
The whole ‘NPC’ thing is so juvenile and solipsistic. Believing other people have less mental agency than you doesn’t make you cool and edgy, it makes you come off as an idiot that needs to grow up
(Note I’m not directing this at the author necessarily, just people who do actually engage with this concept as if it is serious/real)
Yeah I gave up on news and politics during the pandemic. It was all just so over the top, I said fuck this and checked out. I don't think I've watched a news program, political debate, or followed any party platform since then.
I keep up on local news and events, as they are the only thing that affects me anyway. At least the only thing I have any bit of control over.
You just demonstrated a _preference_: ability to choose between options and therefore ranking them. That's the single distinctive feature between NPCs and main characters: ability to have preferences.
The author of the article also demonstrated a preference: according to certain criteria of moral obligation they decided for themselves that it's better to "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to."
Again, to manifest such preference you have to be the main character and not an NPC.
Only non-NPC can decide to what degree that want to be like an NPC and what meaning they put into it. NPCs don't have ability to put meaning into things or display preference.
be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck? have a boring job. do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
"One day, NPCs will wake up and give a fuck about other people and the environments that allow for the NPC life to begin with."
Optimistic take. The PCs are very good at convincing the NPCs that nothing they do can matter. Keep 'em poor, keep 'em sick, keep 'em stupid, control the women and all that.
We are all someone else's NPC. Even the worldwide famous movie stars. Even the billionaires.
My 11 y/o daughter loves the concept: there's this guy, he always walk his dog at the same hours. We always see him in the neighborhood: same route, same hours, same dog (obviously). And we just call him "the NPC". And seeing the NPC is something for us: if one of us sees it, we mention it to the others. But we always keep in mind that every single one of us are someone else's NPC.
Just to be clear: we're not making fun of the NPC. And we're totally okay with others calling us NPCs.
> be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck?
Or, you know, don't give a fuck and drive the car you want to drive: a boring car, or an old wreck (which can be either boring or not), a 2CV [1] (a friend drives one --and the same one-- daily since... 35 years), a Toyota Corolla, a Porsche 911... Whatever the heck you feel like owning. For you, not for what the others think.
Zhuangzi was fishing in the Pu River when the King of Chu sent two high officials to him. They said, “The king wishes to entrust you with the affairs of his realm.”
Zhuangzi kept hold of his fishing rod and did not turn around. He said, “I have heard that in Chu there is a sacred turtle that has been dead for three thousand years. The king keeps it wrapped in cloth, enclosed in a box, and stored in the ancestral temple.
“Now, would this turtle rather have died and left its bones behind to be honored, or would it rather be alive, dragging its tail through the mud?”
The two officials replied, “It would rather be alive, dragging its tail through the mud.”
Zhuangzi said, “Then go away. I too will drag my tail through the mud.”
This is pure escapism. Numbing yourself to the burden of being. Likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis.
The truth is that after the brief initial relief of excusing yourself from being anything at all, you'll end up in a deep depression. It's a naive and immature fantasy.
Remove all electronics from your life, they are a constant nervous system stimulator that has prevented you from truly relaxing into a state of repair. Then introduce responsibilities into your life, start small. We are wired to be needed, wanted, useful, accountable, social. You're just stressed out.
Not sure at all you actually read the piece. Your responses about having a job or inconvenience or expectation seem entirely unrelated.
The text does not, for instance, encourage not having a job. It also does not encourage being nothing at all. Being nothing special is quite different.
Recommended movie: perfect days https://youtu.be/wqUT9hQd1XM?is=v1x85FdKOK_zfu60
I often ask myself if i can go to a small town and live an anonymous life. Its my scoring system for personal pride/ego. Does such an anonymous life stop me from inventing things or think about stuff deeply. I don't think so,..
Thanks for the movie suggestion, looks very interesting, will check it out. Also, the Pixar movie Soul has a similar message.
Another cultural reference to this idea is the song Heaven by Talking Heads. Nothing ever happens.
Annoyed that npc is not defined in the post. Non-playing character.
I feel it necessary to make a slight pedantic correction here, since we're officially defining it. It's Non-Player Character.
> do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
Escapism. You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff. Our bodies are always aiming to relax, because conserving calories is an extremely effective survival method. We are hardwired to do nothing, in order to escape the burden of instead doing something.
> Escapism. You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff.
This word keeps coming up, coupled with things unrelated.
The OP isn't saying "do nothing". He's saying "do what you want to do". If he wants to study mathematics, that's neither escapism nor "doing nothing".
The extreme majority of people don’t have some secret massive project they want to do and are weirdly choosing not to. There’s only one way to interpret this.
Nope, they might just want to clock out from work at 5pm and go ride their bike until sunset without giving a single shit about anything but the fresh air. Or go home and walk their kid to the park. Or throw a ball around the yard with the dog.
Except you've got to cut the grass, weed the flowerbeds, wash the car, do the laundy, cook dinner, do the dishes, etc.
Or not tonight.
If I didn’t enjoy yard care, I wouldn’t have a yard or I’d xeriscape or gravel + trees, or something. Laundry’s kind of a drag, mostly the folding part. Most of the time I enjoy cooking and tidying up afterwards; when I’m not in the mood I’ll do takeout or throw something from the freezer in.
I’m not sure what you’re saying overall? Is it that those things you’ve listed are what stops people from having enjoyable lives where they do what they want?
They are just examples. Adults with responsibilities, especially with familes, have really moved beyond living "without giving a single shit about anything." The only adults I know who live like that are homeless. I guess they are the ultimate real-life NPCs
>There’s only one way to interpret this.
obviously not.
> There’s only one way to interpret this.
In any context, this is about as trivially false as any non-tautological statement can be.
Most people's "secret massive project they want to work on" is their family
If everyone would be ready to jump in and help you with some revolutionary project you should really bother to figure out what that project is going to be.
They are not ready to help because normal life is designed to be absurdly complicated, time consuming, constraining and draining.
The irony is that the solution is for people to take up massive projects that address the many angles of needless complexity [again]
> You SHOULD feel like you have to do some stuff.
Gregor: It would be nice to do something.
Sam: We are doing something. We're sitting here, waiting.
"Ronin", 1998
Sitting sometimes is good, sitting always is not.
Your body is, maybe, but we're not all the same. Making my body sit still and do nothing requires sustained, focused attention; action is the comfort state, and idleness the burden.
Meanwhile, my idleness is so ingrained that sometimes I can't even make myself do the things I WANT to do, like load up a game that I've been wanting to play.
And I'm just tired...all the time. I do nothing and still I'm exhausted.
FWIW, I've been there too. One thing to realize is that action precedes motivation. The idea is to train yourself to do things you _don't_ want to do.
You have authority over your body. You can tell it to do things it doesn't want to.
You can walk into your bathroom and take a cold shower right now, on purpose. Your body doesn't want to, but it will yield if your mind tells it to.
In fact, doing that will switch up your state into a different one, which is half of the work needed to feel better.
Do you know why? It might be worth figuring out. For me is is mild ME/CFS but for you maybe not (a good tell for CFS is if doing any exercise at all e.g. 1km walk makes you feel rough later. Not delayed muscle soreness or a stitch but more like a flu say).
So many other things are possible like iron, thyroid, sleep apnea, ADHD, depression or burnout, long COVID, tropical illness. Maybe more.
Finally it is totally morally OK not to be a 100% productive worker bee. A "cure" is not necessary but might be worth rabbit holing if you desire and have the energy.
That is pretty typical of depression, especially if you can't make yourself do activities you normally would enjoy or you stop feeling as much enjoyment from them
Unfortunately I have no advice for it but I wish you good luck. We're all struggling lately
Call that conserving energy. Contrary to commonly-held belief, calories are a very ambiguous concept.
Or maybe people like to stare at the clouds while herding sheep. This is just bro-science half-baked evolutionary psychology bullshit.
Personally I enjoy listening to the birds with a book in my hands.
>Being nothing special is quite different.
Related, I would also recommend the book "The courage to be disliked"
> Not sure at all you actually read the piece.
On my HN!? Surprised pikachu
Don't be patronising. I am pretty sure he has read the article because I agree with him, and I have read the article as well.
Surprised pikachu :OOOO
You agree with him? Even the boomer coded armchair psychology? My comment isn’t even in the same realm of patronizing as that.
How is this coded to baby boomer? Honest question; I want to understand the post-war generational perspective.
It also ignores the real stresses imposed by society on ordinary people. The point of an NPC is stasis. The walking signpost gives you the same information, or the weapon shop sells you the same broad sword, whether you take 3 hours or 203 hours to get to that point in the game. The NPC has no inner life; it’s code that only exists when it is doing a job.
In the real world, stasis gets you killed. Someone is paid hundreds of thousands of dollars (maybe millions) to find out if you can be made to pay more in rent, accept higher air fares or hotel fees, work longer hours, or accept lower wages. You can’t choose not to be part of the war. You either fight and accept intolerable stress, or you don’t fight and you still accept intolerable stress.
I don't interpret it to that extreme. I think it's more about shutting out noise and acting along a thread that keeps you pleased without interference from e.g. brainrot media or an over-demanding job.
Arguably a reason most everyone found the early internet/web so awesome: it wasn't as commoditized into feeds and platforms. You were an adventurer on an undiscovered planet, a secret life beside the boring real one and just did your thing. It's how most of us ended up here, anyhow.
I feel like we aren't reading the same thing.
Who is this “we” you speak of? I see this word thrown around a lot here. Never use “we” in a sentence unless you’re referring to another individual directly. It’s beyond arrogant to assume you have the authority to speak for all others.
Parent commenter means “we” as in humans. Their comment is not meant to speak for others’ individual preferences.
You'd be a great CEO, preaching people to tie their worth to their output in life.
> Likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis
Maybe, but that could also be because of autism, trauma or some other disability
And maybe the author just wants to feel heard, get others to comment on their experiences, be vulnerable in public (which btw can be pretty stressful too), and connect with their community
> We are wired to be needed, wanted, useful, accountable, social.
When AI eventually takes nearly ALL jobs, that will be a quite difficult thing.
> you'll end up in a deep depression
That’s a stretch and in realm of pure speculation.
A blacksmith is useful for society and for himself. It’s a profession and it’s not anything. OP’s point is that profession compared to chasing dragons. I’m tired of chasing dragons and very happy focusing on my own life.
a low stress tolerance and a highly sensitized stress reaction can often look the same. If someone is hurt repeatedly in the same way, they will react when a stimuli that reminds them of it comes near. Similarly, people who are constantly stressed out often develop things like "learned helplessness", where they are incapable of solving their problems because they've failed, been rejected, or told no so many times that they stop trying.
That can happen with a high stress tolerance too, it just needs to be pushed past the breaking point. Some of us have gone through harrowing experiences and the NPC lifestyle is one coping mechanism among many others.
i dont think it's that deep.
it's the age old advice of "dont give a fuck" dressed up in some modern terminology ("npc")
It even says “maybe this is just a retelling of stoicism.”
"Don't give a fuck" - Ignore your feelings. Ignore your thoughts. Ignore others. Exist in some detached unalive state divorced from the human condition. Because it's easier. Oh and the monks did it. It's also easier to die, that's the end of that path of thought.
It really isn't that though. If you're disparaging normal ass people with jobs and families and lives as "NPCs" you probably should try ignoring your thoughts and feelings a bit because they're probably part of a some low level grinding psychosis.
that is not really what is meant by that advice
(Singer) Paul Simon said he no longer plays "I Am a Rock" at shows.
> The truth is that after the brief initial relief of excusing yourself from being anything at all, you'll end up in a deep depression.
So status quo lol?
Feels more like they're discovering Taoism to me
I don't know if I fully agree with this analysis, but I really appreciate the argument for emphasizing these values.
Yeah if you are a "non playing character" why play at all?
Not all of us live for The Hustle...
Bro, this ain’t LinkedIn you don’t have to signal your virtue as a worker so hard
wtf are you talking about. Being a blacksmith isn't pure escapism.
To make the most facile counterpoint - the reason the Skyrim blacksmith doesn't care if the main character slays dragons is because they weren't programmed to. There aren't consequences either way.
To the extent that this post is meant to be inspiring, it only works if you're an NPC in a static world that has no real consequences - where you actually can live your life in a static loop because nothing will change.
When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion), they are looking at it from the point of view of a player, someone outside the game who understands that the NPC is scripted (this is a silly and egotistical way of looking at the world). This post is looking from it from the point of view of the NPC instead, as if that was a living entity one could be.
IMO, people using NPC as an insult have it backwards. What they mean is that you receive tasks and ideas from them to carry out for cash. That's what players do.
The blacksmith tasks the protagonist to get a Dragon's Teeth or whatever and pay 100 Golds in return(never played TES, sorry if this isn't a good example). The player has no control over the blacksmith; the blacksmith is in full control of the situation. The blacksmith is an NPC. The protagonist is the player. But then some thinks the blacksmith must be the player, I suppose. The fact that this sometimes seem to happen almost puzzles me.
right, this comes close to rejecting the frame, which I think you could fairly do.
viewing npc as a category of person is inherently an ego driven, narcissistic way of looking at things. It is a viewpoint that lacks a theory of mind.
This essay implicitly supposes that the npc has a mind + motivations and that those motivations are more important to the npc than the player character. I'd extend it to say that if you are an npc you are a player character; you're just in a different game. Village Blacksmith Simulator, where you make horshoes, fend off pickpockets and sometimes a hero's dragon fight flattens your shop and you start over.
The flaw is assuming the player character is always the same.
Ironically the people who view others as NPC (and say so in a disparaging way) are likely more one dimensional themselves. I think you're spot on with the narcissism viewpoint.
> I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion)
Probably not totally relevant, but a several years ago I was out for one of my best friend's very low-key bachelor party (just a few friends/family members bar-hopping, no strip clubs). We went to a bar that was recommended by one of us and the dude who greeted us was so insanely charismatic that I assumed he was someone my buddy knew and was this later joiner to the party or something. I asked my friend, "Do you know this guy?" and, you kinda have to know his humour, but he replied, "No, he's an NPC." He was not insulting the guy (in fact I think he may have even said "non-playable character" in full) just saying, "Nope, not with us," and ya... I laughed... like, really hard. Needed recovery time.
I don't know the point I'm trying to make.
> I don't know the point I'm trying to make.
That made chuckle! Not to the point of needing recovery time, but still. Thank you for sharing the story. I can’t help you get to the point you were looking for, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
"I think when people use NPC as an insult (it is a dumb insult in my opinion)"
It's a great insult, because it is usually used to describe someone whose viewpoint is basically a brainwashed and braindead pre-programmed one (either through upbringing or other things) and clearly demonstrating a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
It’s funny, because one might argue that a lack of awareness of, or empathy for the fact that other people also have thoughts and autonomy also demonstrates a lack of self-conscious critical thought.
Yet the NPC is the one who gives the player work. And meaning, in terms of the played character.
It's just "sheeple" for this decade. The hoi polloi. Same as it ever was.
Is that the one where Curly gets trapped inside an elaborate, self-made cage of shower pipes?
Right, and there is very good reason you need to care about a lot of things. That Dragon will burn your village and kill you. You better be concerned about that - you will die.
Your life isn't scripted. If have the option to not ignore the dragon. You can work with your town to setup a watch and places to flee to when the dragon is coming (even if only 50% make it that is an improvement). You can as a town fund adventures to kill the dragon. You can move to a town where there are no dragons. There are probably other options that I haven't thought of.
You should not ignore politics. You need to understand the trade offs. You should plan for what is happening. Russia is at war with Ukraine - things like that can happen to you as well. You should understand enough to have an informed decision on how much to prepare... Maybe you need to build a bomb shelter, maybe not, but you should know in time to build one.
This sort of a anxious hyper-vigilance is exactly the sort of main character bs you should let go of though. Spend some time with your kids or whatever. You actually can't plan and prepare for a hypothetical war with russia.
If it's me against Russia, no, I can't plan and prepare. - ALONE. Ukraine spent several years after 2014 planning for another war with Russia and there had reasonable success despite being in a apparently much worse situation. Ukraine is a large enough collection of people that they could usefully plan and prepare.
Which is part of my point. Don't live alone. You live in a community of people. You need to engage with your community to prepare for that dragon.
That doesn't mean don't go play with your kids or whatever. Do that too. But also prepare for life in ways that you can prepare because you live with other people
Not even with a weekly boardgame night of Axis and Allies, or at least Risk?
>You actually can't plan and prepare for a hypothetical war with russia.
You can, in fact, do this. Just because you prefer to be helpless doesn't mean that's the only option.
i'd thought an npc wud mov out of town to a town with no dragons.
> To make the most facile counterpoint - the reason the Skyrim blacksmith doesn't care if the main character slays dragons is because they weren't programmed to. There aren't consequences either way.
In the actual game, NPCs do care, in fact they often won't shut up about it. They just don't let it affect their lives, which is the point the OP is making.
> When the metaphorical dragon comes to burn down your village, are you going to shrug and go back to looping your hammer_nail_03 animation?
When such a disaster strikes a village those are often scripted events that do change the loops of the NPCs previously inhabiting the village. They are programmed to adapt to a new cycle of rebuilding the village or even assisting the main character in dealing with the threat.
It's funny that the assumption is the NPCs don't care about anything that happens in the world when there are games with NPCs engaging in entire rebellions against their oppressors. It's just that NPCs don't care beyond their immediate objectives being fulfilled. Once the rebellion succeeds and the tyrant is overthrown most of them just settle back into their usual loop.
In Hades, yes. Vanishingly few of us actually control our fates or societies even to a small extent. The modern tendency to think like we do is a form of mania. By indulging it, we damage the only control we really have, our relative health and peace of mind.
Pretending that you don't have a part to play in the fate of society is escapism at best, and learned helplessness at worst. Democracy is explicitly a system that functions off of the sum of individual participation, and if the quality of that participation is poor it will produce bad outcomes even barring subversion by other powers. Pessimism like yours cedes control entirely to those who would take it through undemocratic means, and the result will be a markedly worse world.
You don’t have a part to play of any value to anyone outside of your direct orbit. Nothing you can do will impact history. You will be forgotten shortly after your death. There is no afterlife, you’re nothing more special than a bug other than being complex enough to think that you are.
Just live your life however you want, you only get one, and it’ll be brief.
The people reading this thread are not in your orbit. Yet you seem invested in convincing them of something.
To care about the world and the people in it is human. To numb yourself to that is self-deception, and to advocate for that is harmful.
> Yet you seem invested in convincing them of something
Justify that
I'll admit I'm assuming that you are writing with the intent for your words to be read, understood, and integrated in some capacity into other minds. That is, you are engaging in communication. The contents of your communication are an argument, advice to think about and participate in the world in a certain way. Perhaps this was a total accident, though, and you didn't mean to convince anyone of anything, and were merely pressing keys at random, in which case I apologize for reading intent into your actions.
You appear to lack both imagination and sound reasoning ability
How do you square this opinion with the fact that people actually do get voted into office and enact policies with grand repercussions on history and society?
Did you? Are they reading this? Until they do it remains true in fact and not just in spirit.
"People" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.
Political movements can certainly be an important factor of modern power given the right instigators, but transferring the importance to oneself is, again, damaging mania.
I think the OP means they're NPC in your game or everyone elses game. They don't care to participate in your meaningless rat race.
They're playing their own game, whatever has meaning to them.
The example is particularly bad because in Skyrim the blacksmith actually does react when a dragon arrives (in one of the villages where the blacksmith is on an exterior cell) and can actually be hurt by the dragon.
We're building AI so that it can take care of the dragon, as well as run the economy and do everything else for us. I think soon the only viable option will be to live the NPC life.
New Quest Added: slay dragon
That and the author hasn’t played Dwarf Fortress
I think NPC is the wrong terminology here - everyone should be the main character in their life - to have meaning and agency. But I think the problem arises in how 'main character' is defined and expressed - having the idea that you're supposed to 'do great things' and live this larger-than-life, life.
You don't have to save all the rhinos, defeat every poverty, slay every social cause or overthrow every tyranny. If anything it's arrogance to assume you can, or even should - that your specific brand of saving anything is even correct.
If you look at most people that do well for themselves and have good lives, they live narrow focused lives in domains they care about. They're very much the main characters of their own lives, but also recognize there are other characters running around doing their own things as well.
I think using the term NPC would be more apt if you're referring to someone that's purely on autopilot and not making any effort to ensure that they're leading a life that is meaningful to them.
Maybe what they mean is an NPC in everyone else’s life. Like be an NPC to everyone else and be what you want to be for yourself.
Terminologies:
1. Someone whose life choices can either defeat every poverty or bring the downfall of humankind - Main characters
2. Someone whose actions are in a loop - NPC
3. Someone whose actions are in a loop but we choose to - NPC-by-choice
Is this terminology better? Correct me if I'm wrong!
That’s the best part! We’re all NPCs in other people’s stories _and_ the main character in ours.
You can do and be absolutely anything or anyone you want. Just gotta bear the consequences and that’s it.
Wanna live a homely life surrounded by loved ones? Go do it! Nobody is stopping you. Wanna galivant around the world having adventures with no roots? You can!
And when you meet a local npc bartender on your adventures, you’re just another rando tourist npc. It’s great
I disagree. We're in a multiplayer game, so we're all player characters. I certainly try not to treat others as NPCs in my story.
Yes, while I was reading piece I thought "This is parenting"
Commented elsewhere in the thread before reading the comment (a terrible habit of mine) and I fully agree. The way I explained it to my daughter is this:
"We're all someone else's NPC".
What a rosy view of life! There are no NPCs, everyone is a unique and wonderful snowflake!
Every snowflake is unique but snow is still just snow.
Life’s funny that way. You can’t predict what an individual will do and yet predicting what a crowd will do is so easy we have entire engineering and social disciplines based on manipulating crowd behavior.
Unambitious Loser With Happy, Fulfilling Life Still Lives In Hometown - The Onion
https://theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling...
In The Republic, Plato tells a story of a man who briefly died, visited the afterlife, and came back to life. According to the man, people would be reborn after dying, but they got to choose what they would be reincarnated as. Some people chose to be rich kings, some chose to be fierce animals. Odysseus, a legendary king known for his wisdom, chose to be reborn as an ordinary man.
>Odysseus, a legendary king known for his wisdom
I know our society is ignorant of the classics, but given recent cinema, I'm not sure you need to explain who Odysseus is ;)
Others of us are ignorant of recent cinema.
Sounds like something you’d write as propaganda lol
In Lathe of Heaven by Le Guin, the main character George is famously frustrating because he doesn't do much. Bad things happen to him and he basically just lets them. He thinks his psychiatrist is totally evil yet keeps going back. He has a pitiful lack of control over his life. He doesn't seem to want control, which is the worst part. He isn't super happy, and you could take that as the main point, but I don't.
even George, perhaps the most boring and least reactive person you've ever read about or met, would just laugh at the goal of being "entirely unfazed by everything happening around you." Even he falls in love, experiences great joy and brutal heartbreak, finds his own small ways of making an impact, makes peace with difficult things. For a character who supposedly does nothing important, he does a hell of a lot.
Good luck, I guess!
i am not sure why people are interpreting so extremely.
the gist of the post is "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to." and "the goal is to just do your own thing.".
it is not "never let anything affect you ever, then die".
> the gist of the post is "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to." and "the goal is to just do your own thing.".
So basically, a main character life, the life of a player. A player can even choose not to play the game, and it isn't their whole world.
The reason this post is incendiary is due to their overwrought metaphor which ultimately works quite poorly, if at all.
Plus, it reads like a 15 year old's diary entry.
while it's not how i would have written it, i am struggling to understand many of the interpretations being posted in the comments. it's like people skipped over all the lines that say (or imply) "just do your own thing", and got immediately hung up by the use of "npc".
>Plus, it reads like a 15 year old's diary entry.
okay?
I'm just trying to explain why people are posting what they are posting. E.g. "likely from a stress tolerance so shallow and under-developed that the slightest inconvenience or expectation feels like a crisis" stems partly from the immature writing style.
But given that you are posting passive-aggressive "okay?"s to my explanation while purporting that you don't understand the comments while alluding to the notion that you do understand exactly why...makes me think you are just a troll, or worse.
>makes me think you are just a troll, or worse.
not trolling, just found it to be an odd thing to add on. none of the other comments that i read at the time of my comment, except yours, brought up the age of the author.
i typically try to avoid using age as an insult. i find it rude. you don't, apparently.
(out of curiosity, what is the "worse" thing you think i am?)
The post says "it might sound a bit extreme," and it does!
I mean, the example they give is pickpocketing the blacksmith and the blacksmith just doesn’t care. So, never let anything affect you is kind of exactly what the author is proposing.
They try to reign it back in at the end with “goal is to do your own thing” but the examples given, and really NPCs in general, are the antithesis to that.
Ironically, the NPCs are designed to do exactly what they are supposed to with no free will at all. I have programmed you to do this, and thus you shall.
I think the author lost the plot.
>I think the author lost the plot.
they stretched an imperfect metaphor. i think that's forgivable. the piece, as a whole, is (as they say) a retelling of stoicism.
I’d prefer not to.
If this viewpoint resonates with you, I highly recommend the Japanese film Perfect Days.
It is about a man living a very simple life as a public cleaner in Tokyo, and after watching it (it’s been three times now) I have the desire to throw away 99% of my unnecessary possessions and go work a simple job as a barista or gardener.
> drive a boring car... have a boring job. do nothing after work...
This just sounds like mental exhaustion as mentioned. The internet exposes us to thousands of opinions on how to live, so those terminally online get information overload and analysis paralysis. I don't think the answer is to give up trying or just settle into a boring life. Then people write these snarky blogs as a coping mechanism. Personally, I think navel gazing and these shocking, screw-the-world articles are just ways to live comfortably inside your head. It's addictive to write shocking, against-the-current stuff and get reactions, and it feels like you are affecting your life. But most of the time I think it's performing for yourself.
Adding the 1001th random opinion and being a hypocrite: go offline more, interact with real people and you'll realize life is actually fine and enjoyable. Natural dopamine and serotonin. It's easy to fall into anhedonia or apathy as a safety response to information overload. Having a boring, soul-crushing job on purpose is not good advice, nobody should intentionally spend huge parts of their years on Earth like that. Making your life enjoyable through effort in the real world is not a bad thing.
This post got the definition of NPC entirely backwards. NPC = follows the rules exactly like they’re programmed to. That means not thinking outside the box, ignoring gut feelings, adhering to a routine, consumerism and generally politically unimaginative.
The blacksmith from Skyrim is a great example because along comes a player, puts a bucket on your head and steals all your stuff without any complaints.
i think have a bit of an understanding of where OP is coming from. lately, the grind doesn't stop, and the quality and cost of life are inverting at an alarming pace. and all this time we're being told being the main character means having billions of dollars, be looksmaxxed, have a million friends, and anything less means you're poor and worthless.
this is an incredibly stressful time to be alive. i think i'm moderately ambitious and so i grind at my early stage startup and enjoy the work most days. but sometimes i also think it'd be nice to just have a bakery in a middle-sized town somewhere without thinking too much about politics. and just living my life with its ups and downs, but without the daily / hourly emergencies that come with being on the internet nowadays.
Judging by the comments here, this post is a hell of a Rorschach test.
NPC's have no agency. They're lines in the main character's story and otherwise forgotten.
There is a negative karma to putting this kind of nihilistic message out into the world. Obviously everyone should shoot for the stars, not the dirt. The goal is to give one's life meaning and purpose. If the job is a snooze, adjust your aim. Treasure your family and start your own if you are able. Life will be infinitely more interesting and meaningful when you take on that special burden.
Starting a family has its rewards but it greatly limits your choices, the risks you're willing to take, and the things you're able to try when you don't have responsibility for anyone else. Life becomes pretty narrowly defined and predictable when you have a family, not infinitely more interesting.
Heh, I just shared this elsewhere but kinda relevant here too: https://jonnegroni.com/2015/04/15/the-humans-of-wall-e-were-...
That was a good read, thanks! I think one thing the blog post perhaps misses is that although humans are nice throughout the movie, we are supposed to view a lot of their best behavior near the end as part of their "awakening", the realization that there is more to life than just pleasure and that it'd be great to get to live on earth again. It's not as incoherent as it seems, though there is definitely still room to wonder whether the protagonists are actually the villains.
Dated someone who said this early on, talking about how they wanted to be kept like a housecat and grow plants. I don't like saying things gave me "the ick" but... wow.
As the type of person with a more "life is like playing pokemon, if you make an effort to talk to everyone, you'll have more fun and they'll help in unexpected ways" vibe, I just don't get it.
That's not a life lived, I'd sooner log out.
There is a certain attraction to the idea of being an NPC, or taking the blue pill offered by Morpheus as it were. Ignorance is bliss after all.
In my twenties, I had decided that I didn’t want to have side projects or a job that followed me home. I wanted to just go to work, come home and be.
Shortly after I made that commitment, there was a notice published that I was starting a typography magazine.
I had talked publicly about doing this, but it was something that I had planned on doing with my then-girlfriend who subsequently broke up with me and I decided that I would shelve it. But thanks to that notice, I started getting inquiries and I ended up doing the typography magazine anyway. I’m glad for the experience of having done it, less so for the negative impact it had on my finances for the next decade.
The Bhagavad Gita 18.47: "It is better to do one’s own dharma, even though imperfectly, than to do another’s dharma, even though perfectly."
Funnily I find the OP's thoughts to very much define what a main character is.
An NPC is given a role and identify and they are bound by it forever.
The main character chooses what they want. Whatever that is. But they exercise agency and their own will to choose their reality and what they wish to do and not do. What they wish to care and not care about.
The OP is not an NPC. I believe the OP wants to live a less stressful life. The OP is pulled towards a simple life that does not involve flashy things or high status (this is my interpretation).
Which in today's status signal fueled world may feel like being an NPC. But in my opinion, it is the exact opposite.
My daughter plays games like crazy. She plays a lot of them, started with MineCraft when she was young. I think they are all fantasy games.
She has defined a life she wants to live and is scarily detailed. It is sort of an NPC lifestyle. I believe she is inspired by the games she play.
She might change but for now she seems have a clean outline of how things will be, work, home, and everything else like a very finite number of friends, the things to own, no brand logos (or should be really muted/subtle), etc.
I kind of think the author is attempting to say - don't live your life governed by a script/external expectations.
that said, it is ok to drive a non-boring car, or be dovahakiin.
This is viable option if you are generally okay with the way the world around you works - if you live in a safe place with a good economy and a fair, well-functioning government. Unfortunately this is not the situation for a lot of people.
But then you could be like Greg the Garlic Farmer who had his wife patched out and no one but him remembers her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9BFGlCPS8I
This was always my biggest nightmare: to become an NPC. I always feel like I am capable of more than what I am currently doing, and I am trying to do more. Life is short. I want to die knowing I had a great impact on the world and I did what I could, not as an NPC.
"I do what is mine to do; the rest doesn't disturb me."
"No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good."
"It is not the [hu]man who has too little, but the [hu]man who craves more, that is poor."
"If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write."
"The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it."
You can write a good story about anything. Slice of life stories are great. A peaceful zen character can be a main character. A hard working craftman could be a main character. A man or woman taking care of their sick partner or child and barely having time for anything else is a main character. The whole trend of using the term NPC is a very egotistical framing in the first place, but if you care you can be living any type of lifestyle and be a main character. Culture is very relative, people think they're the main character because they act like a dip shit on a live stream and people watch them. In a lot of cultures people like that would not be seen as enviable at all. Its all pretty arbitrary.
Aren't we all just NPCS in each other's lives? Accepting that you're an NPC is just stating the obvious. Idk about y'all but I'm tryna get to at least side character status lol.
I feel like this take is for a more passive form of stoicism. No you don't have to care about what is going on around you, but you do need to somewhat engage with your life to solve problems, pay bills and take care of loved ones.
Confusing perspective and doesn’t achieve what I think they were trying to say.
I get from this “you cannot have expectations of me, because I’m an NPC, so stop the judgement because I cannot change what I am. It’s in my programming.”
Like, not really anything else. I cannot handle failing to meet expectations (regardless of where they come from, who is seemingly imposing them, or really anything related to expectations at all) so I just absolve myself from having any.
Living is not the same thing as filling an empty space in a game. An NPC is just that - add some extra background staff so that a city feels live-like. You are alive. Go live.
NPCs immitate life, but very pourly. Do not take them as an inspiration.
Don't try to ignore the world around you as it is the direct opposite of a game world which is static.
Real life is dynamic, changing and if you behave as an NPC for a long time, you are going to have a bad time eventually
Don't worry, you likely already are.
spot on xD
Agency is a reason for me to arise each day and work at my goals. Without goals, or agency, I may head for depression (been there, done that).
If I do not see progress being made, I know that if I do not change what I am doing (or measure in smaller increments) again, I may head for depression.
Even crappy odds are an acceptable challenge, when I compare to what I imagine is an NPC/don't give a hoot outlook.
There's a guy that does this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrRZwypfH6A
OP should read Bhagavad Gita. The ancient Indian have talked about this for a very long time. Ashtavakra Gita have also talked about realizing that oneself is pure observer. It is a deep, deep book. You either get it or don't, unfortunately.
That's not my reading of the Gita.
Arjun is not detached. He is doing battle. In fact he is doing the battle he is supposed to be doing even though his relatives are aligned on the other side.
The whole lesson is to exercise your agency to achieve what you are supposed to be doing, despite what's happening.
> The whole lesson is to exercise your agency to achieve what you are supposed to be doing, despite what's happening.
This is interesting because this the EXACT opposite of my reading. Arjuna in fact is not acting on his agency; he despises going to war. However, Shiva (I think) pretty much tell him to let go of his ego. He just needs to do what he has to do. It is his duty to go to war and so he shall. It is a lesson to live life given whatever it is, to not ask what could and should have been, but to just live it. At the limit, you will "die" and become an "animal", "you" will be reduced to pure consciousness, no longer pondering what could and should be, then and only then can you escape the wheel of dharma.
I saw two people with NPC tshirts today (Chinese tech scene). This resontaes quite well with the notion of tangping or laying flat: https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1007589
Why try hard when you can just skate by?”
1 Thessalonians 4:11
Always a good idea to pick up the book and read for yourself in context, but for those who might pass on that opportunity:
“Make it your goal to life a quiet life, minding your own business and working with your hands, just as we instructed you before. Then people who are not believers will respect the way you live, and you will not need to depend on others.”
Does typing count? What does it mean to not work with one's hands in this context?
Birds of the air, lilies of the field, and so on.
I do agree with this attitude, but the epithet of "being an NPC" is about having someone else--the media, your tribe, your church--governing your behavior without you thinking about it.
It's not about being a main character in the world--it's about being a main character in your own life.
"Let us cultivate our own garden." - Candide
The key is consciously making that choice. What people don't want is to be forced into a way of living by others. People can accept what they have a hand in discovering and choosing.
>when you stop caring about being the main character, you finally get to just live your life. I am not sure there is a standard definition of "main character." In literature, at least, there are countless main characters who lead very introspective lives.
"Life doesn't have to be something that just happens to us."
— Guy
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6264654/
Its pretty common in Japanese and Chinese culture to want to live an NPC life -- characterized mainly by being completely ordinary and living a relatively simple life without much excitement, and finding joy in small pleasures.
This is the way. It's a lot less draining on everyone else too.
I think the fact that this post is marked as #long is the most salient detail in the entire thing.
compared to #short, they are long.
https://signalundefied.bearblog.dev/everything/
https://signalundefied.bearblog.dev/is-it-meaningless-to-apo...
If anyone was wondering what editors do, it’s this.
All well and good if your lifestyle stays the same... But what if it keeps getting worse?
Some people want the whole pie, some people want a certain sized slice and some people want nothing.
Some will fight to the death trying to get the whole pie.
Some will fight to the death trying to get or keep their slice.
Those who want nothing have nothing to fight for and over time will lose everything to those who want things and who will fight to get what they want.
I'm definitely in the middle camp. I don't want much but if I couldn't get that, my existence would not be worthwhile. There would be nothing to live for except revenge perhaps.
Even in stories about a poor fisherman who is content with his life; he still owns a boat, a net, a shack, has a wife, a couple of kids maybe. Even the poor fisherman is a hypocrite if he says he needs nothing.
The poor fisherman is richer than me in a material way because he was able to get everything he needed fullfilled for a low cost which he could afford... Probably the exact same things as I need but I can't get those same things for that low cost because my place in the world is different. I am literally forbidden by laws, regulations and moral obligations and commitments to obtain those same basic things and those basic rights which the poor fisherman has.
Rich people look at a happy poor fisherman and think "He is happy because he doesn't need material things."
I look at a happy poor fisherman and I think "He is happy because he can afford every material thing that is required for a happy moderate life in his society." And I can't afford the same.
Doing the things you care about instead of the things you are induced to care about, that is something I agree with. However, what is there to live for, if I am strictly unaffected by the world around me?
JFC, some of ya’ll should take this advice. The article is basically saying focus on your own life, don’t worry so much about what other people are doing and enjoy the mundanity of life. People are acting like he’s telling you to just sit and stare at the ceiling.
My take from it is sphere of incluence.
I thought hearing about The Cave on repeat for 30+ years was nauseating until video game metaphor took over for all of philosophy in common media.
you don't know what you got (til it's gone)
The irony is the life of your average NOC is on the verge of becoming a lot more “intelligent”.
> I want to live in a skyrim house
https://youtube.com/watch?v=z_h8NNQ842I
I have ADHD. Every once in a while I surface and realize I have been living on autopilot and we're now 7 months further.
for everyone else other than you, your family and your friends, you ARE an NPC
>be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck? have a boring job. do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
Obviously. People have reasons for buying cool cars or socializing after work. But if you don't have a reason to do something aside from a vague idea of "this is just what people do", then doing it anyway would be considered NPC behavior. You're just blindly following programming without even understanding the purpose of that behavior.
Instead of striving to shut your brain off, you should strive to actually use it. Think about what desires people have that cause them to take those actions. List them out. Do any of those desires apply to you? If not, then go ahead and stay home.
What do you do when someone else's ambition encroaches on your NPC life?
If there people depending on you to do your part, you cant be an npc.
Reading Dungeon Crawler Carl series... I would not like to be an NPC from that series :D
I think this stretches the "NPC" term beyond its utility. It’s a cute little insult, but once you redefine it to mean “ignore status games, stop worrying about what other people are doing, and live according to your own priorities,” you’re basically just restating advice that’s been around for millennia. That’s Stoicism, Buddhism, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, etc. I’m not sure this new metaphor is adding anything.
He loved the steak even when he'd known it wasn't real
be neither the pc nor the npc
reject game metaphors
accept that your life is what you make of it
reject every possible demand on your energy that does not bring you joy (there will be compromises; weigh them)
eat the rich
That sounds like burn out tbh
Maybe another angle would be:
Not living your life through the lens of third-party audience. I think lots of people (including myself) sometimes view their life not through their own eyes, but through the imagined gaze of some third-party audience. Maybe it's not about being the main character or NPC, but just realizing that there is no movie, no audience. There's just you and the people you interact with.
Agreed. Life as NPC is great.
Gervais Principle strikes again.
The whole ‘NPC’ thing is so juvenile and solipsistic. Believing other people have less mental agency than you doesn’t make you cool and edgy, it makes you come off as an idiot that needs to grow up
(Note I’m not directing this at the author necessarily, just people who do actually engage with this concept as if it is serious/real)
Did an NPC write this?
Best QoL upgrade was to stop caring about politics.
As an immigrant I can't vote anyway so why read about politics every day.
Now I'm just happy about life.
Yeah I gave up on news and politics during the pandemic. It was all just so over the top, I said fuck this and checked out. I don't think I've watched a news program, political debate, or followed any party platform since then.
I keep up on local news and events, as they are the only thing that affects me anyway. At least the only thing I have any bit of control over.
“One needs to imagine Sysiphus happy”
Albert Camus.
weird flex but okay
I want to live like an NPC too, but preferably one that can't be attacked. I'd absolutely hate being an NPC in the Dark Souls series.
You just demonstrated a _preference_: ability to choose between options and therefore ranking them. That's the single distinctive feature between NPCs and main characters: ability to have preferences.
The author of the article also demonstrated a preference: according to certain criteria of moral obligation they decided for themselves that it's better to "do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to."
Again, to manifest such preference you have to be the main character and not an NPC.
Only non-NPC can decide to what degree that want to be like an NPC and what meaning they put into it. NPCs don't have ability to put meaning into things or display preference.
I used to believe in free will like you, then I took an arrow in the knee.
nihilism
be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck? have a boring job. do nothing after work. why do you have to do something after work? do something because you feel like doing it, not because you feel like you have to.
That's just being an adult.
Perhaps an alternative version of the Trainspotting trailer.
This is called getting a job. being a corporate drone in the USA.
In the US, if you are not part of the Epstein class. You are the help. Or in this author’s pose, "an NPC."
Live an NPC life, die by the ecocide/genocides of NPC life.
One day, NPCs will wake up and give a fuck about other people and the environments that allow for the NPC life to begin with.
Until then, they're just here to keep feeding the oppression machines.
"One day, NPCs will wake up and give a fuck about other people and the environments that allow for the NPC life to begin with."
Optimistic take. The PCs are very good at convincing the NPCs that nothing they do can matter. Keep 'em poor, keep 'em sick, keep 'em stupid, control the women and all that.
Surely we can find a gang of plucky PCs to outwit the ones convincing the NPCs?
Wtf have we been playing TTRPGs for if not to prepare for exactly this?
I hate the emdash proliferation. We don't need to bring youtube jump cut editing to text.
We are all someone else's NPC. Even the worldwide famous movie stars. Even the billionaires.
My 11 y/o daughter loves the concept: there's this guy, he always walk his dog at the same hours. We always see him in the neighborhood: same route, same hours, same dog (obviously). And we just call him "the NPC". And seeing the NPC is something for us: if one of us sees it, we mention it to the others. But we always keep in mind that every single one of us are someone else's NPC.
Just to be clear: we're not making fun of the NPC. And we're totally okay with others calling us NPCs.
> be an npc. drive a boring car—who gives a fuck?
Or, you know, don't give a fuck and drive the car you want to drive: a boring car, or an old wreck (which can be either boring or not), a 2CV [1] (a friend drives one --and the same one-- daily since... 35 years), a Toyota Corolla, a Porsche 911... Whatever the heck you feel like owning. For you, not for what the others think.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_2CV