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For those of you not familiar with the term “NPC”, it comes from video gaming, and stands for “non-playable character”. In a game like the Legend of Zelda (or any of the games in the series), as a player, you play as Link and control his actions. As he explores the world, he comes into contact with lots of other characters, but the player has no control over them. Most serve some sort of purpose to further the gameplay – and so are not hostile to the character you play (well, there’s Magda) – but sometimes are hilariously limited in their actions, blithely continuing on with their tasks even when being attacked or when monsters appear or an emergency occurs. This makes sense from a programming perspective, because the majority have one purpose for being in the game, but this inability to “think” enough to react to situations is quite funny.

Over the last couple of years, the term “NPC” has been bandied about, usually in reference to unthinking people, the kind who can be “programmed”, so to speak, to parrot whatever the opinion of the day is, in order to make it seem like there’s large consensus on an issue. “NPC” not only insinuates that these people have been programmed, but that discussion of a topic is futile since they have no individuality or thinking capacity.

As with almost all humor these days, the NPC meme is offensive to some. It’s funny to me having played a good number of video games and having come to the age where one understands that there is no changing most people’s minds through having a logical argument. We filter “facts” through our beliefs, and changing belief is a much more fundamental thing, but I digress…

If you will recall, I mentioned that NPCs are usually programmed to further the character being played along his journey – although programmed to be unthinking, they do perform a task of some sort. It’s on this point that I’ve been pondering the last few days; that we all have to be extraordinarily careful not to treat the people who play minor roles in our lives as NPCs.

I remember many years ago, perhaps in 2000, when I was working retail. I was travelling on Thanksgiving, and I and a couple of family members went through the McDonalds’ drive through for a quick breakfast on a trip to visit other family. Mind you, most of these fast-food places close by noon, but I remember telling the girl at the window something like, “Thank you very much. I appreciate it.” One of the family members travelling with me looked at me like I had just sprouted an alien antenna from my head and asked me why I had done that. I responded, “Well, it’s Thanksgiving for them too.” I tell you, I don’t think this family member had ever considered that before; in her head, the people working at McDonalds on Thanksgiving were NPCs who were there to serve people travelling on Thanksgiving.

Unfortunately, it seems like there’s more and more of that. When we interact with other people, it’s in a way that is oblivious to anything besides how they are useful to our journey. I even have seen this in regard to clergy; that a priest, for example, is there for church services, to baptize, marry, and bury, period. The idea that one’s relationship goes beyond the “business” services here is foreign to many. He’s become an NPC.

This sort of meshes in with the idea that humans are less individuals with souls and more cogs in a great machine, to be used and replaced as needed. Furthermore, I would argue, the idea of DEI brings this to a new level with the idea that excellence (or even competency) is beside the point and in most cases, any one person is enough like another person, and the machine is so big, that one NPC can be replaced for another without doing more than negligible damage to the whole. It’s dehumanizing.

Recently, it’s just seemed ever more important to take the effort not to treat people like they are NPCs. I’m not saying that one has to learn the life story of the person taking your picture at the DMV. What I am saying, though, is that there are ways to work on staying human with people… Things like making eye contact, being polite (saying “hello”, “please”, and “thank you”), being patient, if you notice something good, give a compliment, if you notice something weird, expressing that to someone near you, listening in general, etc. For me, I’m an introvert, and it’s hard, but, for instance, there’s a gas station near my house and we often stop by for sodas (especially in the summer, with their $1 deal). I don’t know the people well, but I love going there and seeing a “friend”, and I also know I’m one of their favorite customers as well. I don’t know them outside of the store there, but they certainly are individual people to me (whom I enjoy seeing), rather than “the help” who can never check out my items quickly enough.

I don’t know; it just seems like this has been put on my heart as of late, and it seems important, even if it’s not exactly easy to explain it. I just know I don’t want to live in a place where we’ve ceased to be human with each other, in other words, an NPC world.

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