People have always compared themselves with others. It is quite a reasonable thing to do in order to survive and maybe even to prosper. One needs some kind of assessment of how he is doing. But nowadays is the scope of comparison much broader than when we lived in small closed communities surrounded only by a few neighbors.
The scope has become literally global. Social media enable us to constantly compare ourselves to people worldwide, not only our peers. You can immediately tell who has a better career, who has a better vacation etc. The most comparable thing is for sure money – because it is easy to count, quantify, and therefore compare. Unfortunately.
Even if you seem to be winning for a time, it usually does not last. You are either overtaken by someone or you level up to another layer of competition. There will always be someone who has more. Someone who is doing better. There is no endgame to this rat race.
So treating life as a race is dangerous, draining, and above all pointless. There is a much better – and much more poetic – alternative. Treating life like an RPG (role-playing game)
We (as people) are quite similar, but nevertheless, each person is unique. We all have different strengths and weaknesses, different tastes, different temperaments, and different interests. We are different characters with different stats and different tasks (quests).
What people tend to forget, is that the point of RPG is not to max all stats, but rather to play your role properly. If you are a mage, be the best mage – there is no point in maxing the strength stats. You should have been a warrior then. Playing the role is more fun than being perfect11
Quests, Exps and Gilds
If we assume that you are a playable character, you probably also have some kind of quest to accomplish in your life. The tricky thing is, that they are not written anywhere. One has to figure it out based on his (or her) intuition. I think deep down we all know what we are supposed to do, it is just that the inner voice is covered by a lot of stuff. And that we are afraid to act upon its commands.
Our character is probably well equipped for all those quests. We just need to continually gain exps and unlock new achievements. Sometimes with help of other players.
Humans are social animals, we are supposed to operate in groups. Only then we can leverage our unique individual abilities while compensating for our weaknesses and shortcomings. Life in general, as well as some quests in it, very often require the cooperation of players (people). So players should complement each other, using their specific stats (charisma, strength, etc.) in order to complete their quests. We can’t win by competing only. We also need to cooperate.
And what about NPCs?
A study found out that many people don’t have an inner monologue – essentially making them NPCs (Non-Player Characters). Sometimes I have a feeling that many of the people I encounter are NPC. Soulless people were called hylics in Gnosticism. So the concept is not at all new.
Hylics are the lowest order of the three types of humans (along with psychics and pneumatics). Their thinking is entirely material, they are focused on neither intellectual (psychic) nor spiritual (pneumatic) reality.
Because many people might be Hylics/NPCs, it makes literally no sense for a player character to compare with them. It is nevertheless the right thing to treat them kindly, as long as they don’t do any harm to others. They are just on a lower level of consciousness. They usually only seek a comfortable and easy life without much of a disturbance. So let them have it. And don’t be bothered by them not understanding the quests of the player characters.
To summarize: we should not compare ourselves to others. They are either NPCs or they are playing a completely different character. Just enjoy the game. In the end, life is probably just an MMORPG God created because he got bored.
What is the purpose of life?… To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool!
– Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
- For example, kryptonite was incorporated into the Superman comic mythos with Superman because the editor thought that Superman’s invulnerability was “boring” ↩︎