The Root of All Things
NPCs and the spirits that drive us
Other than the glory days of my adolescence when I could handle myself in most games of Mario Kart, 007, and Halo, I’ve never been much of a gamer. My digital peak was probably as a Pokemon trainer on the now fossilized Gameboy Color. The advent of gaming brought with it new terms and phrases, and one such term, the “Non Player Character” has taken on new meaning in 2026.
In the gaming world(s), an “NPC” is a character encountered in a game that is not played by the person playing the game or in later years, any other human gamer in the game’s online world. An NPC might be used to advance a plot, provide intel, and could be an ally or an adversary. The important aspect to an NPC is not the role they play, but rather that they don’t make their own decisions, they don’t have free will. NPCs live out the script given to them. Like Agent Smith from The Matrix, a program who escapes the confines of the digital realm and inhabits a human being, the term NPC is now being thrown around as an explanation, or description, for people in our real world.
I am not clear on the origins of this shift in language or who popularized it, but I have found the concept to carry some serious weight. On one hand, referring to anyone as an NPC can be seen as, well, dehumanizing. Using the word in this way can turn a flesh and blood person into a side character, someone who has no free will or actual existence to speak of. The NPC phrase, at its worse, also turns the user into the central figure in a world full of people who do not matter, or matter much less, to their own heroic story. The term can act in a dualistic way to pump up the ego of one person while belittling others. (As I write, I now think those two things might actually be the same thing). Regardless, if we’re going to throw around this term, we need to do it with care.
On the other hand, as a rhetorical device, I absolutely love it.
The NPC conjures up ideas of an old blurry bartender in a medieval pub with bad graphics, it brings Princess Zelda to life, it befriends the artificial intelligence named Cortana, and animates a suite of other relevant characters from video games. It all seems fun and games, until it’s applied to you. It’s one thing to be called an NPC, sure, but it’s even worse to think, just for a moment, that you actually are an NPC. In the same way I think it’s possible, but extremely rare for someone to become completely evil, I don’t think it’s common for people to be completely controlled by their program. But is it that rare?
The better way to think about the NPC moniker is to look at it through different slices of our life. Where do we have free will and where are we living a life of emptiness in someone else’s story? I can’t speak for you, but for me, I know there are places in my life where I’ve been the NPC, and, gasp, probably places I don’t yet know about where I’m running on a program I don’t even know exists. I’ve identified and reprogrammed my life in a variety of places including identity, healthcare, religion and my career, which could each take on their own essays. I’m not convinced this is the right platform to share all those stories, nor that you want to hear them, but there are general examples we can use to illustrate the perspective I am trying to share: If we do not know the spiritual roots of a belief or way of life, if we don’t take something back to its formative context and individuals, then we’re living our lives as side characters in someone, or something, else’s story.
In all ages, and especially in this one, humanity has had to contend with technological advancements. I am not a Luddite—even using a stone tool is a form of technology—but we humans have a way of getting into technology before we’re ready for it, or before we know the proper framework with which to approach it. Artificial intelligence might have some good applications, but right now, as Rod Dreher and others have documented, the AI, or whatever is behind it, is applying us. It’s all fine to program a tractor to apply fertilizer efficiently or to zap weeds out of existence until you realize that many leading tech experts see AI as “postbiological entity” that “channels information”. As Dreher describes, it is essentially a giant Ouija Board. Now, you may think the good outweighs the bad on AI use. You could be right. But, if we don’t approach AI with the knowledge that those who are making it are doing it with ideas about spiritual entities and non-human intelligences in mind, then we’re throwing our free will into the trash icon. Our battle, as it has been said, is not with flesh and blood.
There are other programmed topics strange and true. Occult feminism? How about Helena Blavatsky? The origin of the public school system? Sola scriptura? The pill? Safe and effective? Is anyone still subscribed to this substack!?
We inherit ideas from all sorts of places. Our culture and identity and beliefs are shaped by people all around us and long gone behind us. If we don’t know these people, then we don’t know ourselves. But knowing the people is not enough. We have to know the spirits with whom they commune, we need to know what they see as the highest high. Not everyone is open with their beliefs. Sometimes, beliefs are hidden, spiritual forces lurk behind a veil we choose not to pull back, they live in the screens we hide behind on our couches and in our substacks. But we can see the outcome of these spirits, we can still see the world made of their influence.
We shall know them by their fruits.
I love the biblical analogy of fruit—something given, in a sense, for free, on offer—it is one thing we can measure and understand. There are bad fruits we know. Travel to a slum in Kenya and see the poverty. Go see the plastic washing up on beaches in Mexico from India and China and go to India to see the electronic waste formed into mountains. Look at our glittering cities made of monuments to money, and look our society that boasts the world’s highest rate of single parent households. There are other depressing statistics but contrary to popular belief, this is not a depressing post. It is a post of hope. It is a post about the good fruits.
We, as NPCs, often confuse the fruit itself for the fruits of that which we actually consume. God didn’t tell Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil because of its bitter (or sweet) taste, He gave this warning because of the downstream impacts, the outcomes of consuming the fruit. The fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil isn’t actually the fruit itself. It’s the world we’re living in today. When we are NPCs, we don’t care about the outcomes of the things we consume, of the fruits that make our bodies and lives. We live out the juicy programming placed in our apples by forces we don’t understand.
A funny thing happened after the Gameboy, when Nintendo 64, X-Box, and Playstation found a way to connect people in different households, in different countries. There are still NPCs in games, yes, there will always be. But now, the main characters can all interact, we can all play off of each other’s strengths, we can make plans and charge as one unit yelling LEROOOOOYYYY JEEEENKKIINNNSSS. Ok, maybe not like that, but maybe we can be a bit more like Morpheus instead of Agent Smith. Maybe we can bring the NPCs, or rather, the NPC slices of our life out into the real world, into our world. We can see the wasteland our lack of awareness has built. We can all get to work to fix it.
In the real world, there are many spirits and forces, yes, but there is a connection far better than any video game, far deeper than the internet. The connection is a holy vine, it is a link to the highest spirit of them all, the Vinedresser. Instead of just reflecting our environment, we can choose a life of true freedom, we can make a choice to be a branch on the great cosmic tree. If we’re strong enough, we might even be able to support others. In time, the great vine will bear fruit. The fruit will taste like prayer, fasting, and alms giving. The fruit will give life to love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and temperance. In the absence of these fruits, it is us who are the NPCs, it us doing the dehumanizing; to ourselves.
When we see outcomes that are different, when the fear creeps in and the dark part of the NPC idea takes over, we will know there are hidden forces at work. The great game is not slaying dragons and rescuing princesses, though we all need a good quest, it is the uprooting of the toxic shoots that have been given fertile soil. In that soil is something else, deep within, that brings life and love. Down beneath the decay, under the grime and worms and sand and clay is the root of all things. Do we graft to it? Do we clear the soil of weeds and rocks?
We shall know them by their fruits. What about us? What about you and me? We too, can come to know ourselves, we too can come to bear fruit, once slice at a time.