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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.”
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.
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
Related, I would also recommend the book "The courage to be disliked"
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.
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".
Gregor: It would be nice to do something.
Sam: We are doing something. We're sitting here, waiting.
"Ronin", 1998
Personally I enjoy listening to the birds with a book in my hands.
On my HN!? Surprised pikachu
Surprised pikachu :OOOO
So status quo lol?
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.
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.
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.
it's the age old advice of "dont give a fuck" dressed up in some modern terminology ("npc")
When AI eventually takes nearly ALL jobs, that will be a quite difficult thing.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just live your life however you want, you only get one, and it’ll be brief.
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.
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!
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".
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.
>Plus, it reads like a 15 year old's diary entry.
okay?
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.
they stretched an imperfect metaphor. i think that's forgivable. the piece, as a whole, is (as they say) a retelling of stoicism.
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
"We're all someone else's NPC".
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.
I know our society is ignorant of the classics, but given recent cinema, I'm not sure you need to explain who Odysseus is ;)
https://theonion.com/unambitious-loser-with-happy-fulfilling...
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
— Guy
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6264654/
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.
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
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9BFGlCPS8I
Why try hard when you can just skate by?”
It's not about being a main character in the world--it's about being a main character in your own life.
“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.”
https://signalundefied.bearblog.dev/everything/
https://signalundefied.bearblog.dev/is-it-meaningless-to-apo...
you don't know what you got (til it's gone)
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
https://youtube.com/watch?v=z_h8NNQ842I
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.
As an immigrant I can't vote anyway so why read about politics every day.
Now I'm just happy about life.
(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)
Albert Camus.
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.
That's just being an adult.
In the US, if you are not part of the Epstein class. You are the help. Or in this author’s pose, "an NPC."
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.
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