Saturday, January 6, 2024

Superego vs. NPC

 The key feature of the NPC is a very limited ego. They have exactly one value, the deviant desire to dominate. They want to betray their neighbours, forcing the neighbours to serve the NPC's id instead of their own id.

  From the outside, the NPC ends up looking like pure superego. They have to hide the one egoic desire they have because it's an act of war, and thus everything they do looks like slavish obedience. 

 As with all deviant desires, it is defectively counterproductive. The desire to conquer is the slave's desire. ("Revenge is an act which you want to commit when you are powerless and because you are powerless") The obsession with domination makes them easy to manipulate. It would seem easier to not fight or even oppose the existing order, but to seize and exploit it. The result is that the NPC is seized and exploited. The guy on top does the obvious thing, tuning the superego to serve his advancement and hold back everyone else. Whatever the social system does to help you against your rivals, it takes twice as much as payment for your superiors. Envy is Satan's virtue. 

 There is the occasional exception due to [everyone else's] bad luck. The system is noisy, like every system, and sometimes doesn't locally look like itself. In these cases someone escapes the self-destruction mechanic. Typically this state is temporary. When the noise quiets they will lose everything they think they've gained. The system survives because NPCs really are all identical, so the ruler of the system really is interchangeable with most members of the system. 

 If the old ruler wanted solely domination, and the new ruler wants solely domination, the new ruler is going to find they want to do exactly what the old ruler was doing. The new will simply carry on the production and R&D of the old.


 From the outside, the NPC looks like pure superego, but you can tell they're not by examining the id. At first it looks like the point of the modern superego is to violently suppress the id. "Eat your vegetables." "Do your homework." "Be a wagie." "Submit to your wife/husband." However, if you look deeper, you realize the NPC is enforcing these oppressions. The superego system is allowing them limited dominance. Why don't they have to suppress their desire to dominate? Why does the system permit and even subsidize bullying? It's the market. Supply and demand. Id defines demand. The superego system is formed from the aggregate of NPC ids. This is especially noticeable in extreme cases, such as hunger. If the id is truly being left unserved, even the NPC will attack the system. Albeit in a very limited, superficial way.


 A narcissist typically looks exactly like an NPC, but their ego is dominated by the desire to hide who they really are. They get interested in dominance only when it helps them hide; it's a means, not an end. Meanwhile their id is dominated by self-hatred. They eat only so they may continue to suffer. Given the choice between health and sickness, they will only choose health if it permits the affordance of even more sickness. E.g. they won't let you break their leg because they need the leg to go to the job they hate and see the co-workers they despise. By contrast, a regular NPC will let you make them healthier if it is considered socially acceptable to do so.

 In a Fascist country like America, social norms pressure NPCs to act like narcissists, meaning the difference is smaller than usual. Consequently telling them apart is rather meaningless.
 E.g. the rulers are so weak that they consistently make health socially unacceptable, as they cannot possibly corral healthy competitors. NPC and narcissist behaviour converge; the Fascist NPC will only let you make them healthier if breaking that rule lets them newly conform to two others.

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