Things are only going to get crazier this year (and probably next), meaning that many more people are going to get red-pilled against their will. What insights can can we share with them?
I've been thinking a lot about this too. As an example, when I tell my fellow MInnesotans that Minnesota is a trans refuge State, that a parent can move to Minnesota, and if their kid says they are trans, the State will not acknowledge the custody of the other parent, if that parent objects to transing their kid, even if there is an extradition order. Neither liberals or conservatives believe me when I tell them that, but I have read the damn statutes on the books. They act like I am the kook.
People are only capable of processing what they are open to. if they are not open to it, their defenses go up and then trying to "red pill" them mostly reinforces their prejudices. That said, I never waste an opportunity to plant a seed, to try and pierce through that veil.
Otherwise I'm mostly engaged in trying to help people strengthen themselves after they have taken the "red pill." That is much the point of my posts on spiritual alchemy, and lately I have been posting about creative meditation and discussing more of the western magical tradition. Changing consciousness is an art form, both in the self and helping others.
I'm actually going to weigh in on this as I've red pilled a few people. Once you start seeing things you had not seen before you start finding all kinds of things. I tell people, if you come across a meme or some infomration and your reaction is, "that can't be true" or if its "oh, of course that's true" source it. These days about 80% of things I see from the "red pill community" are dead on. 10% are technically true, but there's some context that makes a difference, and 10% are the Babylon Bee with the header cut off.
I’ve been red-pilled a number of times in my life. The first major one involved rethinking my religious views after being raised in Tim LaHaye’s church and attending Jerry Falwell’s college, Liberty University (graduated in ’81), then teaching at my Christian high school alma mater for 4 years. That was a slow, gradual process and tough and fearful to endure. At the end of it, there was a real sense of freedom that I had never experienced before.
But like many here on Substack, the last four years have been the biggest red-pill of my life. Like your example of the house in the sinkhole, I think this is the hardest part to accept for me: my pre-2020 life is gone. I’ve read a lot of people experiencing this same sense of loss. For those us who just wanted to be left alone and were left alone living our mundane but significant, satisfying lives…those days are gone.
Interestingly enough, the evil I’ve seen of late has caused me to move back toward my religious roots…not in a way that will ever resemble how I lived and thought in my 20s, but a move back nonetheless.
For advice…I’d say…be brave. Trust yourself.
Don’t lose hope. I’ve always liked the line from The Shawshank Redemption:
“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Advice? Nothing about on the ground reality has changed. Only your perspective has. Big picture things generally have subtle effects on day-to-day life. It might change your long term strategies and goals, but chances are everything about your normal life is exactly how you left it, and will continue to proceed as you're used to.
So don't panic and run off to build your doomsday bunker, or quit your job to do full time doom prophecy on the street corner. Chill the fuck out and don't chimp on all the people in your life who are still in the Matrix. Not only will it not change their minds, but you might freak them out to the point they call in Agent Smith.
This is the kind of post whose value is immediate and profound even if it needs to be read a few times to be properly absorbed (not because of the writing, but because of the topics covered) and doesn't include any special pull-quotes, knee-slappers, or other dopaminergic elements. I can see you worked very hard on this and I understand why because I agonize over many of the same things.
I can't help but take the piss because that's how I react to a combination of authoritarianism and absurdities, but I have backed off somewhat on my tone if not my insistence because I think a lot of the people I've been tempted for years to write off as brainwashed are instead reachable but paralyzed by the realization that *all politicians and corporatists suck* and there is nowhere to turn but to each other.
It's helpful to remember some of the biggest lies I swallowed myself, why I believed them, and how I wound up escaping partisan nonsense when I'm tempted to give up outright or just switch to 100% bleak humor and shitposting. I also realize I still have a lot of bullshit caked in the crevices of my own head, even if Iit's not yet clear exactly what and where it is.
"With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe," said Adam Riess (lead researcher and Nobel prize winner).
I’m seeing more of these stories every week from JWST. It won’t be long before we experience the next scientific revolution. Einstein’s ideas (the math for the Big Bang) will be superseded.
My red-pill experience left me so shaken (and suicidal) that I had to withdraw from the world in many ways. As bad as 2024 will likely be, it's still the year I'm starting to re-enter the world with a new foundation for my house, so I'm hoping it will be better than any of the other years starting with "202". That said, I don't know if this qualifies as advice, but I'd say something along the lines of "don't be afraid to give yourself time and space to process things." In my case it was very necessary.
There’s a very large cohort out there that knows they are wearing the same jersey as the perps(of the current and burgeoning madness), that they have worn the same jersey all of their lives. Taking that jersey off represents THE MOTHER OF ALL RED PILLS. Many will simply never be able to do it. It represents a convulsive cognitive dissonance that will not, cannot, be tolerated. I had a pastor in my youth who was fond of saying “Some people would rather be right than saved”. That pokes at the center of it. The proudest people I ever have known have been those that do not know God, and seem proudest of all of not wanting to.
The thing is if you’re resistant to the reality you’re going to resist every possible avenue of investigation of it. You have to for self protection.
It’s a psychological defense. If you for instance start questioning the covid narrative then you’re fucked. All the other narratives will soon crumble.
So the defense is to resist it all. You cannot even crack the door an eighth of an inch , nor the window.
If you persist in resisting any counter narrative ideas, your house built on the foundation of denying reality will actually hold up and seem to grow even stronger. This foundation is strong and at the same time incredibly vulnerable.
If you open the door to any of it (happening more and more now. One no longer needs to pro actively search it out it’s now punching people in the face and harder to ignore) then that whole intact strong foundation will turn to quicksand far quicker than one is prepared for.
So it’s frightening. It is terrifying. And getting moreso as time passes.
Those that hold on to the false (but strong) foundation the longest are going to have the hardest breaks with reality when it crumbles. This year. Next year. Whatever. A lot of demoralization and despair and mental illness is going to be observable.
To be open to the counter arguments is a different and more grounded view. For instance if I get caught believing something that’s not quite true it doesn’t need to destroy my entire foundation of beliefs nor my psychological well being. As it’s a belief system based more on having questions than having answers. This works for me.
This is the difference now between being culturally “left” vs “not.” I won’t say “right” I’d rather say “not left.” To remain adherent to the “left” you’ve got to keep everything all the time all-in on the orthodoxy. This cannot be sustained.
Vs to be “counter” or “not left”. You can be as disparate as you want in your beliefs and views and always be open to new information without having to see the whole house go down.
My advice for the recently red pilled from a 30 year red PIL veteran is to use the internet as a guide to lead you toward books that are well researched and footnoted. Seek out published works (not self published) materials.
Publishing houses take significant financial risks for the content they publish in print.
The flip side of that coin is there are generally ZERO guardrails for bullshit stories anywhere on the web.
Full stop. Here’s a few books to get you started:
The Creature from Jekyll Island by G Edward Griffin
My advice: try to eat reasonably healthy and get in shape. It’s the best path to good mental health. If you can do martial arts, all the better. Not one of the fake ones like Aikido or whatever. I mean boxing, Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai. One of the real ones where you become able to break limbs.
>Given the way the world is, it would take a superhuman level of awareness and strength of character for you to have grown up without believing at least some of the really big lies.
Indeed. Living in Europe, I used to believe that the 1990 war against Iraq and the war against Serbia had been justified. That EU membership was a good thing. That U.S. gun laws caused the gun crime. My mind was changed by people online. By seeing the facts. Since then I'm the one who changes people's minds; on the biggest question, the media bosses, I have changed the minds of nine people that I know in real life. So it works. You can change people's minds with your writings and in person.
I've been thinking a lot about this too. As an example, when I tell my fellow MInnesotans that Minnesota is a trans refuge State, that a parent can move to Minnesota, and if their kid says they are trans, the State will not acknowledge the custody of the other parent, if that parent objects to transing their kid, even if there is an extradition order. Neither liberals or conservatives believe me when I tell them that, but I have read the damn statutes on the books. They act like I am the kook.
People are only capable of processing what they are open to. if they are not open to it, their defenses go up and then trying to "red pill" them mostly reinforces their prejudices. That said, I never waste an opportunity to plant a seed, to try and pierce through that veil.
Otherwise I'm mostly engaged in trying to help people strengthen themselves after they have taken the "red pill." That is much the point of my posts on spiritual alchemy, and lately I have been posting about creative meditation and discussing more of the western magical tradition. Changing consciousness is an art form, both in the self and helping others.
I'm actually going to weigh in on this as I've red pilled a few people. Once you start seeing things you had not seen before you start finding all kinds of things. I tell people, if you come across a meme or some infomration and your reaction is, "that can't be true" or if its "oh, of course that's true" source it. These days about 80% of things I see from the "red pill community" are dead on. 10% are technically true, but there's some context that makes a difference, and 10% are the Babylon Bee with the header cut off.
Really enjoyed this, Daniel. Thanks.
I’ve been red-pilled a number of times in my life. The first major one involved rethinking my religious views after being raised in Tim LaHaye’s church and attending Jerry Falwell’s college, Liberty University (graduated in ’81), then teaching at my Christian high school alma mater for 4 years. That was a slow, gradual process and tough and fearful to endure. At the end of it, there was a real sense of freedom that I had never experienced before.
But like many here on Substack, the last four years have been the biggest red-pill of my life. Like your example of the house in the sinkhole, I think this is the hardest part to accept for me: my pre-2020 life is gone. I’ve read a lot of people experiencing this same sense of loss. For those us who just wanted to be left alone and were left alone living our mundane but significant, satisfying lives…those days are gone.
Interestingly enough, the evil I’ve seen of late has caused me to move back toward my religious roots…not in a way that will ever resemble how I lived and thought in my 20s, but a move back nonetheless.
For advice…I’d say…be brave. Trust yourself.
Don’t lose hope. I’ve always liked the line from The Shawshank Redemption:
“Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”
Advice? Nothing about on the ground reality has changed. Only your perspective has. Big picture things generally have subtle effects on day-to-day life. It might change your long term strategies and goals, but chances are everything about your normal life is exactly how you left it, and will continue to proceed as you're used to.
So don't panic and run off to build your doomsday bunker, or quit your job to do full time doom prophecy on the street corner. Chill the fuck out and don't chimp on all the people in your life who are still in the Matrix. Not only will it not change their minds, but you might freak them out to the point they call in Agent Smith.
This is the kind of post whose value is immediate and profound even if it needs to be read a few times to be properly absorbed (not because of the writing, but because of the topics covered) and doesn't include any special pull-quotes, knee-slappers, or other dopaminergic elements. I can see you worked very hard on this and I understand why because I agonize over many of the same things.
I can't help but take the piss because that's how I react to a combination of authoritarianism and absurdities, but I have backed off somewhat on my tone if not my insistence because I think a lot of the people I've been tempted for years to write off as brainwashed are instead reachable but paralyzed by the realization that *all politicians and corporatists suck* and there is nowhere to turn but to each other.
It's helpful to remember some of the biggest lies I swallowed myself, why I believed them, and how I wound up escaping partisan nonsense when I'm tempted to give up outright or just switch to 100% bleak humor and shitposting. I also realize I still have a lot of bullshit caked in the crevices of my own head, even if Iit's not yet clear exactly what and where it is.
A comprehensive piece, thank you.
FWIW, a growing number of cosmologists are getting red-pilled, thanks to data coming back from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Observations go completely against the Big Bang narrative that has been built up over the past 60 years.
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-hubble-tension-universe-expansion-study
"With measurement errors negated, what remains is the real and exciting possibility we have misunderstood the universe," said Adam Riess (lead researcher and Nobel prize winner).
I’m seeing more of these stories every week from JWST. It won’t be long before we experience the next scientific revolution. Einstein’s ideas (the math for the Big Bang) will be superseded.
My red-pill experience left me so shaken (and suicidal) that I had to withdraw from the world in many ways. As bad as 2024 will likely be, it's still the year I'm starting to re-enter the world with a new foundation for my house, so I'm hoping it will be better than any of the other years starting with "202". That said, I don't know if this qualifies as advice, but I'd say something along the lines of "don't be afraid to give yourself time and space to process things." In my case it was very necessary.
There’s a very large cohort out there that knows they are wearing the same jersey as the perps(of the current and burgeoning madness), that they have worn the same jersey all of their lives. Taking that jersey off represents THE MOTHER OF ALL RED PILLS. Many will simply never be able to do it. It represents a convulsive cognitive dissonance that will not, cannot, be tolerated. I had a pastor in my youth who was fond of saying “Some people would rather be right than saved”. That pokes at the center of it. The proudest people I ever have known have been those that do not know God, and seem proudest of all of not wanting to.
Well said indeed.
Really well said. Thank you.
The thing is if you’re resistant to the reality you’re going to resist every possible avenue of investigation of it. You have to for self protection.
It’s a psychological defense. If you for instance start questioning the covid narrative then you’re fucked. All the other narratives will soon crumble.
So the defense is to resist it all. You cannot even crack the door an eighth of an inch , nor the window.
If you persist in resisting any counter narrative ideas, your house built on the foundation of denying reality will actually hold up and seem to grow even stronger. This foundation is strong and at the same time incredibly vulnerable.
If you open the door to any of it (happening more and more now. One no longer needs to pro actively search it out it’s now punching people in the face and harder to ignore) then that whole intact strong foundation will turn to quicksand far quicker than one is prepared for.
So it’s frightening. It is terrifying. And getting moreso as time passes.
Those that hold on to the false (but strong) foundation the longest are going to have the hardest breaks with reality when it crumbles. This year. Next year. Whatever. A lot of demoralization and despair and mental illness is going to be observable.
To be open to the counter arguments is a different and more grounded view. For instance if I get caught believing something that’s not quite true it doesn’t need to destroy my entire foundation of beliefs nor my psychological well being. As it’s a belief system based more on having questions than having answers. This works for me.
This is the difference now between being culturally “left” vs “not.” I won’t say “right” I’d rather say “not left.” To remain adherent to the “left” you’ve got to keep everything all the time all-in on the orthodoxy. This cannot be sustained.
Vs to be “counter” or “not left”. You can be as disparate as you want in your beliefs and views and always be open to new information without having to see the whole house go down.
“That which you resist, persists.”
Welcome to the new ones. Let's all keep focus on helping them out.
Outstanding post. Having been Red Pilled for the last year or so this gave me some insight. And I have always believed I took the Matrix Red Pill.
I love the term "Marxcissist". Did you coin that yourself? I'll be using it from now on.
My advice for the recently red pilled from a 30 year red PIL veteran is to use the internet as a guide to lead you toward books that are well researched and footnoted. Seek out published works (not self published) materials.
Publishing houses take significant financial risks for the content they publish in print.
The flip side of that coin is there are generally ZERO guardrails for bullshit stories anywhere on the web.
Full stop. Here’s a few books to get you started:
The Creature from Jekyll Island by G Edward Griffin
The Disinformation Series (3 books) by Russ Kick
Tragedy and Hope by Caroll Quigley
My advice: try to eat reasonably healthy and get in shape. It’s the best path to good mental health. If you can do martial arts, all the better. Not one of the fake ones like Aikido or whatever. I mean boxing, Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai. One of the real ones where you become able to break limbs.
>Given the way the world is, it would take a superhuman level of awareness and strength of character for you to have grown up without believing at least some of the really big lies.
Indeed. Living in Europe, I used to believe that the 1990 war against Iraq and the war against Serbia had been justified. That EU membership was a good thing. That U.S. gun laws caused the gun crime. My mind was changed by people online. By seeing the facts. Since then I'm the one who changes people's minds; on the biggest question, the media bosses, I have changed the minds of nine people that I know in real life. So it works. You can change people's minds with your writings and in person.
Don't try this at home