What Red Pill Philosophy Gets Wrong

something changed inside of me I woke up I no longer saw the world as I used to I quit my job I sold my stuff I've downsized my entire life I've been living off my savings for a few years now I no longer see a point in participating in the real fake world I know that everything I see is a lie everything I've ever known is a lie my whole world has been nothing but one giant Lie from the start and I can see that clearly now so why bother Anonymous message on voet.com forum The Matrix has attacked me on the one hand the ideas around being red pilled are farcical the red pill is a very interesting documentary wherein a feminist went out to make fun of these stupid men's rights losers they're racists basically either meant as a derisive throwaway pop culture meme or because of that very fact a symbol of the decline of public discourse the Q Anon movement has picked up tens of thousands of followers and some celebrity endorsements but I think any language adopted so widely can tell us something maybe even a lot about that very public discourse understood properly it might reveal insights about why it's so appealing in the first place and how sensible-minded people might respond what does it mean to take the red pill roughly by discovering the correct knowledge about the world you can see the truth for what it is become clear-eyed authentic it means having a revelation realizing the difficult truth that we've been indoctrinated and duped by Jewish cabals Sinister globalists cultural marxists or radical feminists the sidebar of the red pilled subreddit tells us that it's a difficult pill to swallow understanding that everything you were led to believe is a lie but once you learn it internalize it and start living your new life it gets better in short it means something's deeply wrong with Society Caleb Madison writes in the Atlantic that the Matrix became shorthand for The Uncanny feeling that our media saturated hyper-commercialized machine-mediated culture had alienated us from some Primal human reality but lots of people believe that there's something wrong with society and lots of people blame lots of different groups so why has the idea of the red pill resonated so much with a certain type of person any constant chaos why do people like Andrew Tate and Logan Paul think it's a reliable reference to call upon when they get in some kind of trouble being red pilled goes several ways it can go to the subreddit rtrp uh the red pill which argues that evolutionary psychology can give discontented young men the answers they need to respond to feminism but it might also lead to believing that the global pedophile ring is being operated from a pizza restaurant in Washington and it can also lead to one of the original gamergaters Seattle for truth murdering his own father But whichever direction the rabbit hole goes down it always seems to go to the right so before seeing just how far that rabbit hole goes I want to look at the relationship between being red pilled and The Wider World Views ideologies or conspiracies that the red pill offers release from because many believe in an inauthentic manipulated or just faulty social structure many think our institutions need reforming or are cultural values determine what we think ideologically or that schooling or advertising or capitalism in general indoctrinates us molds how we think in some way so what sets the red pill apart I want to look at how we might think about the social structures and belief systems that influence all of us ask if there's any possibility of transcending them overcoming them taking that red pill and living authentically how can we know what the truth is first what is the Matrix that the red pill seeks to free us from in his book red pill blue pill David newett describes a conspiracy theory as quote a hypothetical explanation of historical or ongoing news events comprised of secret plots usually of a nefarious nature whose existence may or may not be factual there are those who have seen through the conspiracy then there are the rest us drones sheep Jews and fools the problem is newer points out is that some conspiracies turn out to be very real people do conspire secretive plots do exist the powerful do organize how then do we distinguish between a conspiracy and a theory newett says that real conspiracies have three limitations they're often small in scope they aim to achieve one or two ends they're often short in time frame and they often involve a limited number of participants Watergate for example had a single goal over a short period and very few people knew about it contrary to this conspiracy theories often hypothesize a grand plot involving thousands of people to manipulate large numbers of people over a long period of history modern conspiracies Russell murhead and Nancy Rosenblum also argue seem to be thrown together from a spurious range of facts they write there is no punctilious demand for proofs no exhaustive amassing of evidence no dots revealed to form a pattern no close examination of The Operators plotting in the shadows the new conspiracism dispenses with the burden of explanation instead we have innuendo and verbal gesture a lot of people are saying that so what's the logic of the red pill is the matrix it's meant to escape from a conspiracy let's take a look at the manosphere the manosphere is a loose collection of online spaces usually responding in some way to feminism with views that range from mild to misogynistic it contains groups like men's rights activists men going their own way and Pick Up Artist communities it's also the source of the Red Hill metaphor and where you most frequently find it much of it is based on what some have called hegemonic masculinity that men are or should be naturally dominant in society feminism they say has challenged this on this view there's a constellation of Institutions cultural beliefs societal Norms that includes public figures films and literature that creates a belief system that imposes itself on men's subjectivities convincing them that the patriarchy has been oppressing women men internalize this false belief the red pill truth is that male dominance is actually natural either in certain contacts or outright this is the true self that you can access at its most extreme this is the result of a feminist conspiracy or according to the red pilled subreddit of a new female reproductive strategy red pilled subreddit says all of us have been taught how women have supposedly been oppressed throughout human existence in reality this narrative is entirely fabricated it continues we have arrived at a society where feminists feel that they are empowered independent and confident despite being heavily dependent on taxes paid mostly by men an unconstitutional Shadow state that extracts alimony and child support from Men and it continues men aren't born with these values they're drummed into us from the cradle on by Society culture or families and most definitely by the women in our lives sorry but that includes you too mum taking the red pill is to acknowledge this uncomfortable truth everything you've been taught is a lie and it functions as a kind of Triad a dominant Matrix of beliefs for example radical feminism suppresses and denies my authentic individuality which takes the form of say masculinity and taking the red pill is a root a mode of knowledge that can help recover or find that authentic experience this Matrix framework comes up again and again in the history of philosophy in ancient Greece Plato framed it as a cave in which prisoners have been chained to a wall for their entire lives seeing the shadow of things happening outside the cave on the wall in front of them the philosopher according to Socrates can escape the cave and see the world for what it really is similarly in the 17th century Descartes asked how we could be sure what was true how did he know that an evil demon wasn't deceiving him through his senses distorting reality for him how could he be sure that he wasn't dreaming his answer was that he couldn't be sure of those things but that even if there was an evil demon or even if he was dreaming there had to be a thinking thing to trick for that to be true in the first place his thoughts then was what was true what was real rationality was the path to truth more recently philosophers have framed it as a brain in a vat question how can we know that we're not like in The Matrix brains in Vats with an exterior simulation hooked up to our nerve endings what all of these thoughts experiments have in common is this dyadic structure of inauthentic versus authentic existence and they all posit a question how would you know what's true and what's not they were formulating ways of thinking about the idea that the outside exterior objective world was mysterious difficult to get to that we might be being duped by something or someone and they all have different versions of what truth or in some cases authenticity is another philosopher of the Enlightenment Johan Godley Victor took Descartes idea but went much further he argued that whether the exterior world is accessible essentially whether we're being tricked or deceived or have faulty senses doesn't really matter and the reason we don't know is because we create our own experience ourselves we are the center of our own universes that input data we get from the senses doesn't actually come from without but is produced by our actions by the moving of Our Eyes by our decision to listen or write or do or explore man isn't the measure of all things man is the maker of all things he was following Emmanuel Kant who made the case that it isn't the Matrix feeding us our experiences but that we played an active role encoding our own experiences from the raw material that was fed to us from the outside world what can't called the thing in itself can't made a radical leap that emphasized the importance of the individual that our world is what we make of it he said for example that in picking up an object we construct our own knowledge of it it's not given to us from coding in data from my experience about the sides of the object as I'm turning it the color as it shines in the light and other knowledge I might have of it from elsewhere he argued that the experience I have of basic objects and so everything is deeply personal Victor took Count's thought and ran with it he told his students to look within to have faith in themselves in their own World Views and thoughts this sounds commonplace to us today but in Victor's time it was Radical he said that if we construct the objective world out there ourselves then every action every interpretation every choice we make is imbued with a kind of absolute freedom we are at the center of our own Universe we are free from any Matrix he said things like the eye posits itself absolutely he called it self activity the eye generates its own experiences it's not in a cave or a brain in a vat it creates the cave it creates the vat Victor was much more influential in popular culture than he's given credit for now at the time admire is from across Europe flocked to see him lecture his radical theories this was the age of revolution of freedom of Napoleon of Romanticism he told his students to quote attend to yourself turn your eye away from all that surrounds you and in towards your inner self such as the first demand that philosophy imposes upon the student we speak of nothing that's outside of you but solely of yourself the philosopher rudiger sifranski writes that Victor wanted to spread among his listeners the desire to be an eye not a complacent sentimental passive eye however but one that was Dynamic World grinding world creating it was a period deeply influenced by Rousseau's assertion that myself alone I know the feelings of my heart and I know mankind I am not made like any others I have seen and Victor said echoing Napoleon's campaigns across Europe that my will alone shall float audaciously and boldly over the wreckage of the universe Victor was one of the first thinkers to posit something as truly Central ego and if you find what was the core what was at the center of that ego you could have something else that other philosophers later talked about authenticity later in the early 20th century Martin Heidegger argued that we could escape the everyday ordinariness of the they the dull averageness of the other and live a uniquely authentic experience Jean-Paul Sartre following him argued that we are always radically free to transform ourselves that our existence proceeds our Essence we are what we make of ourselves Society tells us that we should be a certain way fulfill a certain role but authenticity means acknowledging that we can always transcend those roles the expectations limits and beliefs of the society that surrounds us if we think in terms of an onion all of these philosophers in different ways believe in an unmediated core at the center Jacob Gollum writes that the concept of authenticity is a protest against the blind mechanical acceptance of an externally imposed code of values what all of these thinkers have in common and have in common in many ways with red pill philosophy is that the root authenticity is present within us able to be accessed by all at all times regardless of the ways we've been subjectified ideologized molded and shaped by the world we find ourselves thrown into with the right tools and knowledge we can see through and overcome and transcend those codes of values that Society has imprinted upon us [Music] Matrix Triad an exterior realm of dominant beliefs an authentic individual to be uncovered like an onion and a root to getting there is so common in philosophy and we see it in today's political discourse what can that discourse teach us about philosophy and what can philosophy teach us about that discourse the Reddit subreddit rtrp uh the red pill describes itself as the red pill discussion of sexual strategy and a culture increasingly lacking a positive identity for men it's been quarantined so you can no longer see how many members it has but its ethos revolves around improving men's health wealth confidence and worth and so on is to hold what they call a higher frame to attract women the posts range from the mild to the offensive the personal to the political but what we're interested in here is that relationship between the inauthentic Matrix the authentic experience and The Taking of the red pill to get there in the red pill subreddit the inauthentic Matrix is the new feminist frame we live under the authentic man has access to some Timeless truths about attracting women the red pill is the way to get there one post reads the man of value instead brings wisdom strength mental fortitude leadership wealth and excitement to the table women girls crave this it's built into their evolutionary psychology and biology it is so hardwired into them that not even all the movies TV shows media propaganda and fiction books can overcome this instinct another said we are indeed no longer in hunter-gatherer times however much of what was at play then still applies today this includes women of course Desiring bigger and more physically intimidating men among many other things it's all evolutionary Behavior bro for the red pilled femininity and masculinity are fixed unchanging and stereotypical one recent post tells us that most women are naturally hysterics and followers and don't have desires of their own because they base their desires on the desire of the other the red pilled sidebar recommends to work on your frame the way you present yourself by working on some Timeless truths most of these truths are innocuous work out Eat Right dress well but deep in the how-to Guides of the sidebar you find advice like contrary to feminist slogan earring no doesn't always mean no oftentimes no simply means not yet there are also critiques of feminism like there's a tendency of media and culture to put women first excuse their misdeeds and criticize any holding of accountability or pointing out of double standards as being anti-women there's much to Wade through here but what I find interesting about the red pill subreddit is the way that any man can draw on almost immediately accessible Timeless truths about what masculinity is and what women find attractive this is why being red pilled leans conservative in much of conservative philosophy wisdom comes from past dying tradition everything we need is available from that tradition in the present moment the best of all possible worlds is here it aligns with other ideas that conservatives tend to adopt like rational actor Theory and the Invisible Hand of the market that the market and rational individuals and sexual selection are all self-balancing a naturalized order of course if that self-balancing way of the world is natural then any feminist leftist interventionist or regulatory attempts to adjust correct or Aid or change becomes inauthentic tipping the Natural Balance off and forcing people into an inauthentic Matrix that skews the real self The Wider manosphere all draws from this basic frame it's why the red pill redditers are often attracted to Andrew Tate why Andrew Tate supporters align with Jordan Peterson often and why Peterson fans don't have to do much intellectual leg work to agree that the swamp of the Matrix in Washington needs draining Allah Trump for all of them climate change discourse is an attempt to control us as covid-19 lockdowns were government officials a mini tyrants feminists are indoctrinated cultural marxists the universities are lost to all of them and so on it's hard because women have to want to work for you women have to want to obey you Tate like Peterson says he takes on full responsibility for everything that happens to him once you're on your own you really should not be expecting you know you're you're swinging on a trapezium like this introductory video from the red pill Reddit says you're on your own for authentic Timeless inner truth to be accessible it has to be so without much or any influence from outside individual responsibility has to be just that individual this mode of conservatism seeks wisdom in the present moment in the present self rather than in institutions or universities say your political Solutions or wider critiques advice like build muscle make your bed work on your frame is timeless Universal requires no depth of thought the Matrix frame has to rely on authentic natural Eternal truths that are immediately accessible because any other appeal to any other authority is Tainted by The Matrix I talked a lot about already about the necessity of cleaning your room which is you know in some sense salvation is fined in Jordan Peterson's words within this lines up neatly with wider paleo-conservative views paleo meaning ancient conjures up images of a Timeless experience we can all access through the nation national identity is natural Christian ethics eternally true capitalism the way of the universe paternalism passed down for Generations paleo thinking relies on the idea of a natural state of nature where everything hangs neatly together the past should be repeated authentically in the present without change it's the sacred worship of the present moment within this Frame desires needs base impulses especially masculine ones are taken as natural and to be fulfilled fitting neatly with consumer culture too every cultural and consumer proposition is a hook a quick fix history is replaced with stoic insights sociology replaced with pop psychology literature replaced with action films deep critique replaced with shallow philosophy quotes foreign this Frame of authentic knowledge being found within through the red pill contains a fundamental error about how knowledge is formed thinking through this era can help us think about how we should respond to the manosphere knowledge is never immediate but always mediated it runs through different points like a river never coming from a single Source but always from multiple entry points to understand a river say we have to look to physics geology its tributaries weather cycles and so on there are many disciplines many points of view not any supposed single Source any understanding of the concept of a river requires an engagement with the wider idea of nature a totality itself in fact immediate knowledge or supposedly authentic identity is often mistaken immediate direct experience tells us that the sun revolves around the earth or that sticks Bend in water immediate direct historical evidence from for example a soldier during a war is powerful but tells us nothing of The Wider War the reasons the politics the campaign the troop movements the maps memory and the senses can also be faulty trauma can affect how we think our personalities our psychologies the present moment can always affect how we think change how we think several philosophers have argued against thinkers like Descartes can't and Victor that knowledge can be based on immediate and authentic first-person principles the German philosopher Georg Frederick Hegel for example very influentially argued that all knowledge is mediated that the whole is more important than the individual parts what does this mean well it's impossible to understand any concept without going outside of it to the whole it's impossible to understand men without considering the relationship to women and as such the concept of human and then the human's wider relationship to its environment and nature it's impossible to understand the concept of Timber without the concept of tree landscape water and oxygen because Human Action is social any choice of what any individual should do jumps outside of the individual and has to consider the wider whole how others will react what the law is say what friends will think or colleagues what the science says in short all action is inter-subjective because there's always another person to limit what we say to prod to argue another subjectivity becomes part of ours even if we ignore them move away there's still a space that where they are that becomes part of our individual subjective mental map philosopher Terry Pinkard puts it like this self-legislation must start from somewhere in particular from an involvement in some kind of pre-reflective pre-deliberative context of rules and principles that we have not determined for ourselves and thus from some other legislation that has been imposed on the agent from outside the agent's own activities thinking involves going outside of yourself if you live egotistically as Andrew Tate does believing in the sheer power of self-confidence and self-will you fail to incorporate the ideas the social rules and influence of others into your map for acting you can act as if your realm of authentic and red pilled existences my truth say but you're shutting yourself down from other people's modes of living thinking acting and because of this you're going to inevitably become a less successful actor in the world this is why empathy is one of our most powerful human Tools in attempting to see something from another's point of view it's not just that you're being altruistic or thoughtful or benevolent or considerate it's that you're widening your own knowledge picking up different ways of seeing talking in multiple personal language images thinking about what the other would do and why the wider you cast your net of understanding the more you touch the most powerful of thing the universal the perspective of infinity the person who can call upon and has a sense of the universal inevitably over the long term becomes the most influential the philosopher Frederick shelling in responding to Victor's all-powerful eye said how can it be the case that all knowledge starts from an eye when there must be some kind of pre-established Harmony a common world of some kind to even communicate to in the first place at all otherwise he says quote those who intuited utterly different worlds would have absolutely nothing in common and no point of contact at which they could come together with the hyper personalized experience we get from the internet conspiracy theories become more common precisely because the I thinks it can always dispute the common World by choosing its own evidence by putting itself and its own experience on a pedestal but this is an stake as Philip K dick said reality is that which when you stop believing in it doesn't go away Freedom being more free doesn't come from believing and tapping into some inner wisdom but instead comes from without comes from our institutions and historical contexts our bodies of knowledge our Collective responsibilities how others respond to you and so on it's not the hit workout and the self-help book that sets you free it's our Collective landscape which is again why red pill ideology lines up with libertarianism people like Jordan Peterson have to believe that freedom to be masculine for example comes from Timeless individual freedoms rather than an idea of freedom that's evolved and changed over time and will continue to evolve and change institutions feminism cultural marxists regulations are all criticized based on how much they supposedly restrict that innate natural and Timeless individuality but institutions whether the media governments churches families schools friendship circles colleagues any normative body of knowledge about how to act and what to do this is the raw material from which individuals are formed from which individuality Springs forth this is the common world to use shelling's terminology that should be the object of any analysis it's there in that common world that our inter-subjectivity plays out in a culture that doesn't believe this history doesn't matter because we have the supposed Eternal truths of something like evolutionary psychology sociological change doesn't matter because there's no such thing as Society in Margaret Thatcher's words institutions are only important to the extent to which they align with my truth my desire to do what I want to do there's a turning inward rather than an acknowledgment that all experiences mediated that we all have to engage interact with each other in the outside world in this way of thinking there's only the immediate desire the individual feeling the present moment what this really amounts to is stop thinking renounce analysis and reflection things won't change in this video I wanted to explore some of the philosophy that might help explain that red pill Matrix Triad for me as much as for you it helps to lay a foundation like this a structure to further explore but any analysis needs to think about exactly why men get pulled into this rabbit hole in the first place been rich and Eve bijalka writes in a conversation article that for many young men their introduction to the manosphere begins not with hatred of women but with the desire to dispel uncertainty about how the world around them works and crucially how relationships work they continue that the foundations of the manosphere may not strictly Center on misogyny as is popularly imagined but in young men's search for connection truth control and community at a time when all are increasingly ill-defined and the sociologist David Morgan has argued that as the world has shifted from Brawn to brains many men have fallen behind boys don't do as well as girls at school wages have stagnated for 50 years were staring at screens all day and presented with the highly unequal sexual space and unrealistic models of what success looks like Morgan argues that some men devoid of the status they think they used to have find themselves in a position of quite cultural redundancy but instead of thinking through change the conservative tendency is to blame change if feminism cultural Marxism and conspiracies the problem then all you have to do is look within to a Timeless kernel of supposed masculinity to find the solution in taking the red pill and seeing a truth that cuts itself off from The Wider Matrix of belief you end up stubbornly cutting yourself off from other groups other ideas other people limiting yourself and what you can do with your life to be honest this is a topic I need to return to because I was reading Victor and chilling and Hegel and I thought oh I can make a little video about some of the philosophical ideas and how they relate to being red pilled and to be honest I've now gotten ahead of myself so I've got a long reading list to get through I'll leave a link in the bibliography and you can maybe join me and maybe we'll discuss in the Discord and I'll return to this topic from a different angle with this philosophical Foundation at a later point because the intersection of masculinity conservatism identity politics and people like Tate and Peterson Howard all seems to mesh together clearly tells us something important about our present moment so in conclusion I try and keep it simple because I think the message from what we've just looked at here is that the red pill doesn't exist it itself is an ideology a mythology a matrix of beliefs because there's no escaping the social common world and reverting to some authentic rational notion of what masculinity or anything else is if you think you can find the key to say relationship success in a forum or a method or a formula there is none inter-subjectivity is more important than you thank you to all of these incredible patreon supporters these videos take a long time to research write and make I do a lot of reading they're always sourced and there's a bibliography in the description below I've written something short on why I think this kind of well-researched long-form content is worth supporting it's through the link below too if you agree then you can support Then and Now by pledging anything from a single dollar per month and get your name in credits access to scripts early and become a member of the Discord server if you can't do that I know everyone says this but please do subscribe hit the Bell like leave a comment these things help with the algorithm so so much I'm also trying out a newsletter I'm going to distill and Summarize each video into a quick easily digestible email for those who don't have time or want to recap along with some related insights sign up below as always more than anything thank you so much for watching I'll see you next time

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 291,797

Keywords: andrew tate, blue pill, jordan peterson, logan paul, philosophy, red pill, red pill dating, redpilled, the matrix, what does red pilled mean, what is the red pill

Id: LS-hOpY-bFY

Length: 39min 22sec (2362 seconds)

Published: Wed May 10 2023