Thursday 4 February 2016

Blue Pill, Red Pill & Christianity compared using Tolkien

Blue Pill = Wormtongue's whisperings

Red Pill = Orc Draught

Christianity = Mirovor: The Cordial of Imladris

*

Blue Pill  
(i.e. Anti-Christian Leftism, Political Correctness, the propaganda of The Cathedral, the emanations of Social Justice Warriors)

[Gandalf]: Ever Wormtongue's whispering was in your ears, poisoning your thought, chilling your heart, weakening your limbs... Dulling men's wariness, or working on their fears, as served occasion.
[Theoden]: Indeed, my eyes were almost blind...

Red Pill 
(i.e. Secular Neoreaction, Dark Enlightenment, Alt-Right, Moldbuggism)

Ugluck thrust a flask between Pippin's teeth and pured some burning liquid down his throat: Pippin felt a hot fierce glow flow through him. The pain in his legs and ankles vanished. He could stand.

Christianity

As soon as Frodo had swallowed a little of the warm and fragrant liquor he felt a new strength of heart and the heavy drowsiness left his limbs. The others also revived and found fresh hope and vigour.

Lesson: Red Pill thinking is to Christianity as Orc Draught is to Miruvor: both awaken from debilitating delusions, give energy, and get you on your feet - the one with searing anger and aggression; the other by a sustained warming of the heart.

11 comments:

J. B. said...

Perfect.

Johnathan said...

Thank you for posting this, and for your anti-red pill stance in general, which in my eyes boosts your credibility a hundred fold.

I simply cannot understand how anyone calling themselves Christian can have a red pill mindset or be advocate things like 'Game' - Vox Day is a particularly hideous example, pure anti-Christian poison, the most egregious and in your face pride, narcissism, and machiavellianism, masquerading as Christianity.

Red pill thinking itself tends to heighten and intensify all the worst emotions - anger, hatred, jealousy, envy, arrogance, ego, pride, compettiveness - essentially, all the low animal brain emotions, at the expense of the higher emotions.

Christianity is a blessed antidote to the red pill mindset, and inculcates health and joy without neglecting firmness, as opposed to the rot found on red pill sites.

ajb said...

I would add, *real* Christianity. It would be nice to have a term that more clearly delineates Christianity as I think you intend it here, with much of contemporary so-called Christianity.

Bruce Charlton said...

@ajb - Yes indeed, but I suppose we should keep the simple term and differentiate the Christianity-flavoured Leftism populated by secularizing fifth columnists with the more complex phrase!

Valkea said...

Jewish religious traditions allow fairly large adaptation and development to each present situation and time, although the most important things remain the same. In the communities of Moses, which fought for survival in large part hostile environment of men and nature, the difference between good and evil was more clear, palpable, binary and abrupt than in modern society. E.g. a man in bureaucracy / large complex organization does a minor part of the work processess of an organization. He might be very distant from the people and things that are the objects of his work. He likely knows at best fuzzily and unclearly, often not at all what kinds of concrete effects his particular job or even organization has on society. The bureaucrat is often well-intentioned, and likes to see himself as a good person doing good things in secular materialist context, whether he is religious or not. Could we then use because of these kinds of reasons generally finer gradations and gamuts of good and evil in modern society?

Liberals started with fairly good premises and slid slowly more toward bad features. Liberalism is the convergence of many things, but some of the main lines of development could be described shortly in the following way: Division of power to prevent tyranny or the rule of one man (Power is divided into parts, which balance each other. Power has fairly short duration. Laws and people in power can be changed. Powerful groups or persons cannot dominate and oppress weaker groups or persons. In liberal society politics is always frustrating to people, because division power ensures that nobody and none of the groups can attain all their goals and fulfill all their wishes. This is exacerbated by the fact that peoples imaginations and unsatisfiable emotional needs can always create much more needs, wishes and wants that can be realistically fulfilled.) ---> Commercial and bureaucratic requirements (as much as possible interchangeable, atomized and homogenous work force and consumers) ---> Liberal ideology which weighs 2 - 3 of the safest and the most usable moral foundations in this kind of liberal societal and organizational context, and fades away to varying extent the other 3 - 4 moral foundations (6 moral foundations is the normal human morality, conservative morality, which in reality liberals cannot avoid using.) ---> Modern secular and materialistic tyrannies and two World Wars; they are the results of intensification of all the six moral foundations to one-sided extremes in bureaucracies, which create corresponding fanatical collectives of atomized individuals ---> continues in part 2.

Valkea said...

Part 2.

---> Fear about the 3 - 4 moral foundations and accusations and suspicions towards conservatives, who use fully all the 6 moral foundations (Liberals always suspect and accuse conservatives of being Fascists, Nazis, racists, homophobes, sexists, etc., no matter how innocent conservatives are, or how distorted and foreign to life the liberals accusations are. Liberal belief that conservative morality is not suitable in modern bureaucracy, it is dangerous in modern bureaucracy, it should not be used there. Liberals are partly right. Liberalism becomes the dominant and leading ideology, liberals become the dominant political group. Conservatives change to de facto slow liberals, who walk 10-15 years behind liberals, gather possible dissident voices to safe liberal channels and never seriously reverse the liberal advancements ---> As generations come and go, the initial reasons for more intense liberalism become more and more unknown even to the liberal elites and all kinds of interest attach to liberalism, intensifying it more and making it more rigid ---> Soviet Union and other communist countries collapse, the most powerful Western counterweight to liberalism dies, and Global economy increases ---> Liberals cross the line of old liberalism almost imperceptibly and start mass immigration policies, which are a radical change in Western societies. Conservative grass roots become more radical as a consequence, which again increases the rigidity and radicalism of liberals, etc. What line liberals crossed morally and politically? When liberals started power division policies, every group had to desist from part of their goals, needs and wishes in important areas. Now liberals ordered without democratic debate and input from the people, that major part of population had to desist from all their goals, needs and wishes in one crucial area, which affects negatively all the areas of their lives. If mass immigration continues, the immigrants will one day change radically the lives of all liberals too. Thus traditional conservatives try to save liberals from themselves too. If Western peoples would have remained religious, it is likely that mass immigration would not have started.

This is the situation we are in, and which we should try to solve peacefully.

Ps. When liberals highlight transient, multiple, changeable, made up, deviant, etc. identities, it is part of the power division process taking place at the grass roots level.

Misanthropist said...

In all fairness the red pill never claimed to be a comprehensive plan for living. It is simply a term for people that see through the lies and delusions that society is based on.

I think one of the biggest problems is that people really cannot handle too much reality, and society will always be based to some extent on comforting lies and delusions. The problem today is that the number of unsustainable lies and delusions has reached breaking point.

I suspect one of the real purposes of life from a spiritual point of view is to see through the illusions of this world. It makes sense that life would lack some purpose or challenge if the reality of most things were clear and openly acknowledged from the outset.

As someone who has become more red pill over the years, it is a lonely experience to be somewhat disconnected from others that are still firmly inside 'the matrix'. It is an effort to have to deal with the expectation of validating various nonsense as part of general social interactions.

Bruce Charlton said...

@Mis - The real problem is not at the factual level, but at the much deeper metaphysical level - i.e. the understanding of the basic structure of reality - which is untouched by Red Pill thinking.

Your own description shows the problem - a loneliness and deep despair which often leads to bitterness, resentment, anger and is compensated by pride.

By contrast, Christianity has the opposite effect if practised over the long term, and the effects is at the deepest level. Tis is not at the pleasure level of doing what you want and having fun and not doing what you don't want; but at the base level of life having purpose, meaning and personal connectedness.

Ingemar said...

@Mis - To put this in Platonic terms, you are switching caves rather than actually, completely exiting caves altogether.

See also-- https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/what-about-the-infrared-pill/

Anonymous said...

I give Moldbug a bit more credit than orc-draught; I don't think he fits very well in Tolkien. A bracing tea from the Orient is what comes to mind.

But TRP, white nationalism, etc: yeah. Orc-draught.

Strange times.

Bruce Charlton said...

@spdi - Yes - I learned several important things from Moldbug; a fact that I have acknowledged a few times

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=moldbug