Red pill vs. Blue pill/Awake vs. Woke revisited

 

What are we swallowing? 

What are we watching, folks? What in the wide world of mind numbing is a goin' on here? Trying to answer that will be difficult, but you know me. I’m going to try my level best.

I wrote a blog post about this topic about eight months ago, and because the proverbial worm has turned, I feel the strong need to revisit it again. If you need to re-read my commentary, please click here

Since writing that post, I am inclined to revise my position to say that to be Red Pilled is to be ‘awakened.’ To be Blue Pilled is to be ‘woke.’

For me, the red pilled are those people who see the reality of what is actually happening within the social corridors of our society. They are not fooled into thinking that the ideology of progressivism is the mantra of democracy. No. They understand that, if not careful, progressivism can lead down the road to socialism, authoritarianism and/or worse, communism. They often wonder: why dismiss the call for nationalism and instead, support the rise of totalitarian or oligarchical government? Why not support a representative democracy?

So, now we’ve traveled back to the ’30s and the onset age of ‘isms? Oh noooo!

I wrote a blog post about this topic as well. If you need to re-read my commentary on socialism, please click here

In my humble opinion, this is getting crazier and crazier. We’re not following truth, that’s for sure. If we believe what we’re told to believe from the media; people are divided now more than ever (although in my daily interactions, I couldn’t tell you that). The 1960s were a terrible time for race relations. But, we got through it and became better for the struggle. Now we’re faced with something even uglier. It’s as if the struggle for emancipation and civil rights reform didn’t work back then. It did. Let’s not forget how far we’ve come as a people. But some don’t seem to think that’s enough.

Will it ever be?

Like a black hole in space that sucks up anything near, it can never get enough or be filled to the brim. The abyss of social justice cries out to be fed, and no matter how much we feed it, it still wants more. It cancels and censors at will, it seems, with no end in sight. Which begs the question of civilization, as we know it, being on the decline. A frightening thought and/or question, to be sure...but maybe?

I recently heard a brilliant woman speak about the detriment of society becoming soft and too politically correct. To paraphrase, she says:

‘Civilization develops on an arc. At the pinnacle of the arc is where you’ll find ‘privilege,’ The abuse of this privilege forms a type of democracy, which then develops into ‘rights.’ Civilizations tend to decline after this. We tend to confuse privilege with rights. But because we have privilege, we feel that the government, state, or even life should give us more rights than the government, state, or life has the right to give. People don’t want to get off their duffs and make something of themselves. We have become very greedy people who want to be given things and feel the right to ask the government to take care of us.

Right now, we live in a time where we have more privilege, rights, and liberties than ever before. Our civilization had progressed to provide us with unprecedented prosperity, but this comes at a price. We have grown more soft, spoiled, and entitled. We can’t all be generals and field marshalls, we need foot soldiers. There is still good, but we need to recalibrate to make things more realistic to save our civilization and sensibilities.’

I agree!

To quote another brilliant man who wrote about being ‘woke,’ he says:

‘The meaning of the word ‘woke’ has evolved from something positive a few decades ago where folk were ‘awakened’ to the deeper levels by which we live our lives, and the genuine social injustices that were going on around the world. In recent years, ‘woke’ has become used to describe those who weaponize issues around social justice, race relations, and politics in order to silence the reasonable opinions of anybody that doesn’t share their opinions and views. They often indulge in ‘virtue signaling’ - making a show of their grand virtues in the style of the ‘humblebrag.’ The woke crowd will often relentlessly pursue any person or company or politician that doesn’t agree with their ‘values’ until the offending party are ‘cancelled’; shamed and banned from public life, social media and sacked from jobs.’

A bit maudlin...but I couldn’t have said it better.

Black hats, white hats, awake, woke, red or blue pill, doesn’t matter if we have our heads on straight. What are we doing? Who are we becoming? I know I will never lose sight of who I am and what I believe. I will not foist my beliefs on others, nor will I push it around in their faces. That’s not Christian and not worth the effort. People will believe what they will, and no amount of talk will change that for them. And that’s fine. All I can do is put forth my best effort to write about it and maybe, just maybe it will awaken a few. 

The beauty of the red pills is they’re not hard to swallow.

 

~ DaMarie

Photo Courtesy of Ksenia Yakovlena