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First of all, I should explain that the blue pill in this question is not Viagra. For those who do not know, the red pill/blue pill dilemma was popularised by the movie The Matrix, in which the hero is offered a choice between a red pill which will reveal the uncomfortable reality of his existence and a blue one which will allow him to continue believing in the illusory, familiar world he has experienced up till that point. Actually, since the blue pill is designed to let you continue the life you had, perhaps it is more like Viagra than I imagined.
Anyway the metaphor is especially popular with libertarians, conspiracy theorists and certain political movements who use it to suggest that people need to be “red-pilled” to see their version of reality.
But more of that later. Clearly there are some difficulties with the red pill/blue pill debate. For one thing, the red pill does not actually exist. Its non-existence means there is therefore a sinister conspiracy at the heart of the red-pill promise, since a pill that is not real cannot expose anything except your credulity. And yet even being brought to the moment of decision is a red-pill gambit since it involves accepting that the blue pill world is false. So believing in the red pill basically means you have already taken it even though you can’t because it does not exist.
By contrast, taking the blue pill, which is meant to be a metaphor for choosing blissful ignorance, allows you to continue to believe that there is no such thing as a red pill which reveals the hidden mysteries of the world; which is confusing because there isn’t. So the red pill is really blue and the blue pill is really red. Furthermore, if both pills can only exist if the world we think we are in does not exist either, then which chemist can you get them at?
All of a sudden this is less an existential question of your existence than one of those logic puzzles where you meet two men in a wood, one of whom always lies and one of whom always tells the truth.
But let’s park that for a moment and treat the red and blue pills as merely a metaphorical physical expression of a decision to reject or accept the presented falsehoods of the world. In other words, the pills both exist and do not exist. Go figure that one, Schrödinger.
Forgetting all that, though, which pill should you take? Well, it partly depends on who is offering it. But beyond that, do you want the hard truth or the comfortable existence? Each has benefits. Red-pillers feel like the owners of secret knowledge and so enjoy being fantastically condescending to anyone they disagree with, who by definition must be taking the blue pill. Blue-pillers don’t believe they are blue-pillers since they don’t believe in the red and blue pill thing, so look down on red-pillers.
The red-pill metaphor is especially popular among the more conspiratorially minded, who want to wake up the world and fight back against the horrifying reality of some form of social democratic government, possibly secretly run by Bill Gates and using Covid vaccines to control our minds. Take the red pill and everything makes sense because everything that has not worked out for you is no longer your fault. If you do think the red pill is for you, by the way, I’ve got some really good stuff for sale at prices so extravagant you dare not believe it doesn’t work. Don’t be put off by the fact that they say ibuprofen on the side, that’s just there to fool the man.
Taking the blue pill is a lot easier. You can carry on enjoying life. But against that is the risk that you are being played for a fool by the system of which you choose to remain ignorant.
None of this would matter much except for the fact that the world’s most powerful country is now basically in the hands of red-pillers (although they are curiously credulous about cryptocurrencies and the intentions of tech titans). But the principle applies to pretty much any outlook with the core belief in the enlightened and the unenlightened.
Perhaps the ideal solution is to follow the model of weight-loss drugs and microdose on red pills, taking only enough to make you a little more sceptical but not so much that you shed all intellectual muscle and walk around with the remains of your intellect hanging off you like folds of skin. So yes, maybe microdose on the red pill. But don’t take so much that you start to believe it exists.
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