Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the modern term NPC is entwined with the idea of being captured by an idea. I sometimes use mind virus interchangeably with an idea that captures the mind. NPC or non playable character means someone who follows the crowd. They might be considered Bonhoeffer’s or Cipolla’s stupid majority. Some say this mindset is taught in school. Others that it’s the result of social programming. The reason people become crowd followers is important because it shows us how to stop the trend. A society with individuals acting in a complex system is more resilient, prosperous, and free than a hierarchical top down command and control system. Command and control systems then should be eschewed in favor of the complex system that we live in.
The reason a complex system of individuals is more resilient is because it has few failure points but many connections. A complex system is characterized by many individuals interacting. The individuals’ actions affect their neighbors and their neighbors’ actions affect them. This allows a complex system to self-organize, be adaptable, have sub systems, and exhibit emergent behavior. If a danger appears in the environment, a complex system will adapt quickly. This is because complex systems have many ears to the ground. When an opportunity comes along a complex system is best able to take advantage of it. This is because a complex system has many eyes. These are some of the reasons why prosperity emerges from a complex system and freedom is a prerequisite for a complex system to operate.
Hierarchical systems or command and control systems are always superimposed on a complex system. They seek to control the vagaries of the world with power, with the morality of a crowd. Hierarchies are dependent on the intellect, sight, and vision of the ruling 1%. Meanwhile, a complex system exploits 100% of the population’s abilities. This means that a hierarchy is susceptible to being captured by an idea, being blindsided, mistaking opportunity for disaster, and must become despotic as their policies fail. In the dancing landscape that is the world we live in, a local peak that a goodly monarch is aiming at, might be a low spot once he gets there. Command and control systems then are unfit for purpose. Yet, central planning is a fallacy that NPCs just refuse to give up on.
Bonhoeffer, Cipolla, and Carl Jung’s ‘people don’t have ideas… ideas have people,’ explain how NPCs operate. A crowd is the opposite of interacting individuals. The individual NPCs in a crowd submit their morality, minds, and agency to the crowd. Bonhoeffer said that the stupid will become violent if confronted with facts that refute their assumptions. That can’t result in peace. Cipolla said that the stupid harm not only those around them but themselves as well. This cannot lead to prosperity. Jung’s claim that ideas can capture people’s minds fully explains the NPC paradigm. They follow the crowd, and what is a crowd but a seething mass of emotion. Crowds don’t build things, they tear down Chesterton’s Fences. Individuals working together raise the things that crowds raze.
Central planning, command and control, or hierarchical systems call it what you will, appeal to the NPC. Controlling the complex world’s dancing landscape with a gun makes sense to an NPC. I remember when the Obama team was told their demands for GM couldn’t be met because they violated the laws of thermodynamics; the team responded… we’ll change them. This illustrates the fundamental problem with central planning and the NPCs that promote it… they lose sight of their own limitations. Even the best intentions when applied to a dancing landscape often yield the worst results. Meanwhile, selfish intentions in a complex system make it adaptable, prosperous, and resilient. Individuals in a complex system make us rich… while the smartest central planners leading NPCs make us poor.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
