The Psychology of NPCs – The Unthinking Masses

The following is a transcript of this video.

“Today we come across an individual who behaves like an automaton.”  

Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom

In video games, an NPC, or non-player character, is a background figure who is governed by the programming of the game and capable only of performing assigned actions and repeating prewritten lines. An NPC is also a metaphor for the real-life individual whose thoughts, opinions, and behaviors are programmed by the forces that shape the cultural zeitgeist, be it the mass media, social media, political figures, celebrities, propaganda campaigns, or the so-called class of experts.   

While the term is new, NPCs have populated society for centuries. In the nineteenth century, Friedrich Nietzsche observed that society was increasingly filled with “pseudo-men governed by public opinion.” “Be yourself!”, he cried out to these pseudo-men, “All that you are now doing, thinking, desiring, all that is not you” (Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations).

In this video, we explore the psychology of NPCs. We examine why modern society produces them in abundance, why NPCs are fervent supporters of authoritarian governments, and what can be done to prevent NPCs from destroying society.  

“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform,. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking—and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.”

Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom

Nobody is born an NPC. NPCs are shaped by unhealthy social environments. Common to the upbringing of the NPC is what the author and child psychologist Alice Miller called “poisonous pedagogy”: a style of child-rearing that treats the child’s emerging autonomy as a threat and something to be controlled. Instead of allowing a child to be guided by his or her curiosity and to develop independence and freedom of thought, parents focus on raising obedient and compliant children. They teach their children that if they want love and acceptance they must submit to the parents’ will. The unspoken aim of this pedagogy, Alice Miller explained, is that “the child’s will must be ‘broken’ as soon as possible.” Or as Jerry Kirkpatrick writes in Independent Judgment and Introspection: 

“Most parents are loving toward infants, but when the children move into their “terrible twos,” parents begin controlling…Often, the controlling continues throughout childhood…Choice and self-assertion are seen as a disruption of authority and disobedience. In reality, they are signs of developing self-esteem and personal identity. When they are erased by the controlling, authoritarian behavior of adults, children quickly get the message that getting along means going along. It is a rare child who matures to adulthood with independent judgment intact.” 

Jerry Kirkpatrick, Independent Judgment and Introspection

Another force that extinguishes independence and freedom of thought is public schooling. From a young and impressionable age, children are trained to sit still for hours, obey instructions, repeat approved ideas, and advance through a standardized curriculum at a standardized pace. 

The so-called “successful” student is the one who submits to the commands of the teacher and regurgitates the approved ideas of the schooling system. The student who questions too much, thinks too freely, pursues his own interests, or refuses to memorize useless facts and complete meaningless assignments is punished or, in some cases, branded with a learning disability or mental illness.  

After twelve years of public schooling, which the teacher and author John Taylor Gatto called a “twelve-year prison sentence,” many young adults are left severely handicapped in their ability to think for themselves, act from their own volition, question authority, or carve out their own path through life. Government-run schooling manufactures NPCs on a mass scale. Or as Gatto explained: 

“The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders…The aim is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality….When you take the free will out of education, that turns it into schooling.” 

John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down

One of the defining characteristics of NPCs is that they do not acknowledge their inability to think for themselves. Instead, they live under the illusion that their opinions are the product of research and independent reasoning, when in reality they simply parrot – sometimes word for word – the ideas promoted by the mainstream media, social media influencers, and the other news sources they consume. Or as Erich Fromm writes: 

“…if we analyze [his opinion] more closely, it becomes evident that he has heard the [news] and has accepted it. Feeling compelled, however, to have his own opinion about it, he forgets that he is simply repeating somebody else’s authoritative opinion, and believes that this opinion is one that he arrived at through his own thinking…He imagines that the reasons he gives us preceded his opinion…but if we examine these reasons we see that they are actually only pseudo reasons which have the function of making his opinion appear to be the result of his own thinking. He has the illusion of having arrived at an opinion of his own, but in reality he has merely adopted an authority’s opinion without being aware of this process.” 

Erich Fromm, Escape From Freedom

In video games, NPCs are usually harmless background figures. But in real life they are a primary factor in the rise of authoritarian rule. As they are unable to think for themselves, NPCs need someone to tell them what to believe, what to value, what to strive for, whom to hate, what to fear, and where to draw the line between good and evil. Authoritarian rule and its associated ideologies provide NPCs with a ready-made system of beliefs, values, and prescribed actions. Freedom, by contrast, leaves them aimless and anxious, or as the twentieth-century psychologist Rollo May observed: 

“Is this not roughly our dilemma today? Are we not caught between authoritarian trends on one side and directionless vitality on the other?…When a nation is psychologically and spiritually empty, totalitarianism comes in to fill the vacuum; and the people sell their freedom as a necessity for getting rid of the anxiety which is too great for them to bear any longer.” 

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself

In his book Fear No Evil, the dissident Natan Sharansky explained how the 20^th century totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union drew its power from the support of a large class of citizens who wanted the government to tell them how to think and act.  

“The state was maintained not by tanks and missiles, or even by camps and prisons. These were necessary, of course, but only for strengthening the real base of the regime—the consciousness of the slave who looks for guidance to the good czar, the leader, the teacher.” 

Natan Sharansky, Fear No Evil

As NPCs crave authoritarian, and even totalitarian rule, we will not see a return to a free world so long as they remain in the majority. A free society depends on individuals who can think for themselves, exercise their autonomy, disobey authority when necessary, and resist the pressure to conform. Or as Rollo May observed: 

“. . .there is no political freedom that is not indissolubly bound up to the inner personal freedom of the individuals who make up that nation, no liberty of a nation of conformists, no free nation made up of robots.” 

Rollo May, Freedom and Destiny

Parents have a major responsibility in helping raise this new kind of citizen. A premium should be placed on helping children cultivate independence of mind, moral autonomy, and self-trust. Whenever possible, parents should also seek alternatives to government-run public schools.  

“Do we really need school? I don’t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don’t hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because… homeschoolers have surely put that banal justification to rest.” 

John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down

When an alternative to public schooling is not feasible, parents should at the very least teach their children to navigate the oppressive school environment consciously and strategically. Or as Jerry Kirkpatrick explains: 

“Even in a semi-free country such as the United States where education is dominated by government-initiated coercion, there is nothing wrong in encouraging students to “give teachers what they want,” then telling the students to study on their own to develop ideas that may not be acceptable to the government-controlled schools.”

Jerry Kirkpatrick, Independent Judgment and Introspection

We should also cultivate the courage to speak our minds and follow our conscience, even when doing so turns a mob of NPCs against us.  

“The hallmark of courage in our age of conformity is the capacity to stand on one’s own convictions.”

Rollo May, Man’s Search for Himself

To reverse the authoritarian trends that are occurring across the world, we must be as vocal in our resistance as the NPCs are in supporting this form of rule. It is not enough to think and speak freely among those who share our opinions, we also need to stand by our convictions in the face of hostile opposition. Those who can see the dangers that are approaching but do nothing about it are more cowardly than the NPCs. For at least the NPCs think they are doing good, while those of us who know better but stay silent, have no excuse. Or as the psychologist Stanley Milgram wrote: 

“Tyrannies are perpetuated by diffident men who do not possess the courage to act out their beliefs.” 

Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority

Further Readings