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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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
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.
>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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.”
>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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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
> Not sure at all you actually read the piece.
On my HN!? Surprised pikachu
> 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
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.
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.
I feel like we aren't reading the same thing.
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")
"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.
I don't know if I fully agree with this analysis, but I really appreciate the argument for emphasizing these values.
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.
[delayed]
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.
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.
"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.
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.
New Quest Added: slay dragon
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
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.
>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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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?
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)
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.
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.
Don't worry, you likely already are.
spot on xD
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."
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.”
Birds of the air, lilies of the field, and so on.
Does typing count? What does it mean to not work with one's hands in this context?
Reading Dungeon Crawler Carl series... I would not like to be an NPC from that series :D
>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 want to live in a skyrim house
https://youtube.com/watch?v=z_h8NNQ842I
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)
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.
That sounds like burn out tbh
Did an NPC write this?
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."
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
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.