Saturday, October 13, 2012

Shadows on the Wall




 I took Philosophy 101 as a sophomore in college. At that time, I just didn't get it. It bored me. I just didn't understand how all these books about philosophy and the old, dead men that wrote them, had anything to do with the actual life I was living. Although I did give the class a real effort towards what I thought should be an "easy A" (I got a C) I just didn't have enough experience and introspection to understand the appeal of studying what I then considered as nothing more than intellectual navel gazing.


Autodidacticism enabled by daily exploring of teh interwebz for over a decade has most assuredly shown me the error of my ways. Philosophy is at it's core, the search for the truth. There is nothing more interesting, nay, utterly fascinating, than to discover that something you've believed in and followed your entire life, has been nothing but deliberately fostered falsehoods and delusions, indoctrinated for the express purpose of controlling your behavior.

It is the very core of the Matrix allegory...which has now become the predominant zeitgeist of this virtual place we now call the manosphere or androsphere.

Everyone is 'taking the red pill' these days, eh?

Except everyone has gotten there own definitions of what exactly is the 'red pill' and what is the 'blue pill.'

Boiled down to it's basic core, the red pill is truth, the blue pill, lies. Lies that keep us unaware of the metaphorical matrix that has been constructed to enslave humanity and harvest our life force, our energy, our very essence, to fuel it's own purpose.


Like a stagecoach horse with blinders on, allowing it only to see the road ahead so that it can concentrate solely on it's task it's owner demands of it, so to are we the sheeple of this Brave New World Order given our own set of blinders so that we stay firmly plugged in to the Matrix, laboring for the benefit of the system, rather than ourselves.

The Matrix is very real, and we are all plugged into it in some way or another. But the idea itself, of keeping human beings enslaved by limiting their ability to see the bigger picture of their existence, so that they do not even know they are enslaved, is an old one...very old.

Behold! human beings living in a underground den, which has a mouth open towards the light and reaching all along the den; here they have been from their childhood, and have their legs and necks chained so that they cannot move, and can only see before them, being prevented by the chains from turning round their heads. Above and behind them a fire is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and the prisoners there is a raised way; and you will see, if you look, a low wall built along the way, like the screen which marionette players have in front of them, over which they show the puppets.

I see.
And do you see, I said, men passing along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels, and statues and figures of animals made of wood and stone and various materials, which appear over the wall? Some of them are talking, others silent.

You have shown me a strange image, and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave?

True, he said; how could they see anything but the shadows if they were never allowed to move their heads?

And of the objects which are being carried in like manner they would only see the shadows?

Yes, he said.
And if they were able to converse with one another, would they not suppose that they were naming what was actually before them?

Very true.
And suppose further that the prison had an echo which came from the other side, would they not be sure to fancy when one of the passers-by spoke that the voice which they heard came from the passing shadow?

No question, he replied.
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

The red pill | blue pill allegory is really nothing more than the offer to Socrates allegorical prisoners to allow them the opportunity to take off the chains and climb out of the cave and see the world as it really is.

Come see the truth...or don't. You can stay right where you are, comfortable amongst your fellow prisoners,  firmly enthralled and entertained with watching the shadows on the wall. These shadows, they have messages for you, messages that will help you bear your existence, chained and enslaved.


From The Allegory of the Cave:

Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance.  We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know.  When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives.  But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better.  In fact, you want more!  It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care.  Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant!

In the 21st century, our cave is our matrix. Our views of the world and reality, nothing more than the shadows of lies, delusions and illusions projected not on a cave wall, but into our minds, by our televisions, movie screens, bill boards, newspapers, magazines, books and all other manifestations of mass media.

Take the red pill...or take off your chains and get out of the cave. Live a real life as you were meant to.

Or, take the blue pill, keep the chains on, and spend the rest of your existence in the bowels of that dark cave...the light outside is too bright and dangerous anyways.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Slow clap...

I am majoring in Philosophy and have always thought this. The manosphere likes to bash arts degrees because they believe they are useless in this economy. Philosophy is Red Pill 101. The parallels I see between my school readings and the blog posts of the manosphere are uncanny. Great article.

dannyfrom504 said...

i hate coming here because your subject matter is MUCH deeper/better than mine. like i've said before....i'm the trailer park of the Sphere.

jerkface.

Unknown said...

The fact of the matter is that our collective experience can be made out like the Stoic's cave. However, the Movie Matrix is much, much more accurate.

From single mothers sending you to public school, to growing up in it and going out to a state college; we have been forced fed a steady diet of feminist BS our whole lives.

Or maybe a more accurate depiction would be the Truman Show with Jim Carrey. Our own personal little bubble where we never realize how fake everyone is, because that is all we have ever known.

When we finally realize the ruse, we have no way to explain it; we cannot know all the men watching on TV/Internet rooting for us; because they are "legally" and nethically held captive from telling us directly how to escape the only prison they have ever known.

When all of us break out, not just anyone, but a whole lot of "somones" are going to have a lot of explaining to do; and "I'm sorry" just won't cover it.

Great job Keoni in writing an old version of an modern AV lighting dropping from the proverbial overhead of some poor man's scripted life.

Great article!

AllanF said...

Another great post, Keoni. I'd be curious to read your thoughts on being a father and raising one's children to take the blue pill, and not just in regards to LTR dynamics, which in many ways is the easiest area to navigate from a blue-pill perspective.

As for myself, it gives me considerable grief. I'd personally love to check out, but no man is an island, especially not a father. I am largely unsure how to proceed. I want to keep all options open to my children for them to decide, but that means staying engaged to the system a lot more than I'd like.

You might consider watching the movie Surfwise. It's about an iconoclastic alpha-male surfer and how it effected his children as adults to be raised outside the system. While it was completely fine for him live outside the system, he was in the right time and place for it, it's obvious his adult children are the ones left to struggle with the costs of being outside the system. Without credentials or a history their life-options are severely limited. The father there rationalizes his decisions like any fundamentalist would, but I'm not as comfortable making such one-way decisions for my own children. So, I'm curious what your thoughts are.

Actually, now that I've typed all that it seems to me you probably are fundamentalist (I don't mean that pejoratively), but for some reason I've thought of you as not until now. Go figure. :-) And again, I mean no offense.

Regards.

AllanF said...

navigate from a blue-pill perspective.

Well, if it's not obvious, I meant red-pill perspective.