This article was originally published at https://pushingrubberdownhill.com/ On May 5, 2018, where Adam Piggott publishes regularly and brilliantly. You can purchase Adam’s books here.
There is a certain predictability that goes with the general response to any of my articles that cause controversy. The standard line goes something like this: the article in question creates an uproar that usually consists of arguments centered on misdirection, strawmen arguments, ad hominem attacks and outright lies; I write a follow-up article that rebuts all of the usual bullshit; crickets.
Typically the first article will receive anything from 50 to 100 comments on my site, XYZ magazine and its Facebook page. The follow-up article will usually be lucky to get a total of 5 comments.
It has happened so many times that sometimes I wonder why I bother writing the follow-up. I’m still wondering.
There has been a great deal of talk over the last 12 months of people being “red-pilled.” It is the label de jour of the moment. The Z Man has noticed this trend as well.
“One of the stranger bits of the current year is how people all over the ideological map are claiming to be “woke”, “aware” and “red-pilled” despite believing things that directly contradict things other “woke”, “aware” and “red-pilled” people believe.”
The reality is that people cluster in herds and organise themselves in hierarchies so that they feel safe with their place in the world. They create for themselves a habitat that to them feels secure. They then spend an inordinate amount of time finding other people who feel the same way, while investing even more time in convincing themselves that whatever it is or who it is that they are currently following is the be all and end all of life, the universe and everything.
This investment is done not so that they can be right or so that they can know truth; it is so they can belong.
The act of being red-pilled is not just about being ‘woke.’ In fact the waking part is one of the final steps on the journey. By the time you have awoken you have already done most of the hard work, you just didn’t realise it on a conscious level.
The real key to being red-pilled is the ability to think for oneself. This ability is anathema to the act of belonging to a group or a crowd. The two must be mutually exclusive. General acceptance is a very big sign that someone is full of shit and trying to sell you something.
This is nothing new. It has been known for millennia. But it doesn’t matter as in general people do not want to have to really think for themselves. It is much safer and much more comforting to place ones faith in an external belief and to then rigidly hold to that dogma in the face of any contradictory evidence. People prefer to kill themselves and die still believing rather than face the horrible reality that not only have they been lied to, not only did they fall for it, but that they wanted to fall for it all along.
It took me about 23 years in my adult life to become ‘woke’ as we now call it. The number of other red-pilled men that I know is very small indeed. But there is no red pill community as men who are red pilled don’t seek a community. There is no red pill leader because men who are red pilled don’t seek a leader.
The act of being red pilled is simultaneously an act of freedom and a burden. The freedom is that you can now see. The burden is that you are almost alone.
This is the reason that I continue to write on the internet and record podcasts. While I don’t seek a community I do very much like to exchange ideas as it is for my own benefit.
At the top of this page is the link to my personal beliefs and opinions. At that page is the following quote:
“Please note: as an adult I reserve the right to alter or change the following positions based on new and relevant information as it comes to hand. Contrary to what many of you may think, it is not a sign of weakness to act in this way. Those who hold rigidly to their opinions in the face of all contrary evidence practice dogma. And those who would criticize someone for changing their opinion are infantile and will not be engaged with here.”
I don’t shake things up just to see the cage rattle. I do it because I have seen something that I hadn’t seen before and I am bound by my obligation to seek truth to reveal it. My real name is on this blog so that I have skin in the game. In the past the push-back and insults I received were a source of stress. Now they hardly register for me at all. It is not because I don’t care, it is because I don’t see the point in caring.
It is relatively simple to get a lot of people angry. It is much harder to get someone to change their mind.
Hence the disparity between the comments on the article that riles them up and the follow-up that explains why they’re full of shit. It’s one thing to threaten someone’s belief system. It’s another thing entirely to then go and back it up.
You are most likely not red pilled. Not even a little bit. The most that the majority of people manage to do is to replace one belief system with another. The most common belief system is to just follow someone and take their every pronouncement as ‘just brilliant, man.’ You get to join a club, be surrounded by other people who think the way that you do, feel warm and fuzzy, and collectively turn on anyone so foolish as to question your current deity.
If you really want to be red pilled then you have to begin the task of attempting to think for yourself.
Get back to me in 20 odd years and let me know how it’s going.