Stop Taking the Blue Pill
Did anyone wish for a new Matrix movie? Because you got what you asked for.
It has been almost a full human generation since these words were spoken:
“You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
Those iconic lines were from the 1999 movie The Matrix. The idea of the “red pill” served for two decades as a bipartisan metaphor for removing the scales from one’s eyes and seeing the world as it really is. Everyone likes to think they’ve taken the “red pill.” After all, we live in the Information Age. Isn’t it obvious what the truth is?
But try to pay attention to the movie.
It is important when looking at a piece of art that you first figure out if the work is for you. Despite the bunk the “cool people” will tell you, humans are not equal, and each of the social classes has its own art. The Matrix appeared to be for the masses because it was released in cinemas. But it was actually aristocratic art. How do I know that? Because everyone focused on the wrong pill.
The blue pill is a bit more complicated than simply the status quo and is understood quite differently depending on what social class you belong to. For those in the peasant class, the blue pill represents submission. But for the aristocracy, the blue pill does exactly what it says on the tin: “wake up and believe whatever you want to believe.”
So, 23 years later, let’s see if I’m correct.
Just in time, cinemas are showing a new movie by the same directors with almost the same (much older) cast called The Matrix: Resurrections. So, start with a simple question: Do you think the directors took the blue pill or the red pill?
Go back to that iconic line: “wake up and believe whatever you want to believe.” Sometime between the first Matrix movie and the latest, the Wachowski brothers decided to become the Wachowski “sisters.” Does this sound like they took the blue pill or the red pill?
Do you ever get the feeling when watching a movie or viewing a painting that you are interrupting a conversation to which you were not invited? That’s The Matrix. I’m not referring to some Baudrillardian “world pulled over our eyes” simulacrum. I simply mean that’s the feeling I get when I watch any of the Matrix movies: that I’m trespassing in some strange way.
I remember walking through the British Art Gallery and there, among thousands of amazing works, I had the same strange sense of being a stranger. Like I wasn’t supposed to be there. Like, I was seeing artwork that wasn’t for me. The paintings and sculptures were created to be enjoyed by their aristocratic patrons, not by a peasant like me 500 years in the future.
Anyone with a sense of history will know the reason this great artwork now sits in a public gallery is that the aristocratic families who commissioned the pieces were all killed, dispossessed or exiled and their property stolen by revolutionary governments. Sure, some aristocrats volunteered their collections to galleries, but it’s a bit disingenuous to call that action “charity” since they had all witnessed their cousins, siblings and friends be destroyed by the mob.
I’m glad the art exists. I’m also happy it’s in a place where I can see it. But I also know it wasn’t made for me. I am not part of the social conversation for which it was made. The artwork speaks a language I do not understand, like a series of coded messages. No matter how much “art history” I read, I will always be an interloper, eavesdropping on something I wasn’t supposed to hear.
The same is probably true for you. If we all were to take “the red pill,” most of us would be confronted by the realisation that we are what the Soviets once called “useless eaters.” Whether due to laziness, fortune or plain stubbornness, most people will contribute nothing to history. And yet we all have access to the kinds of art that once belonged only to the winners of history. Doesn’t that induce in you a sense of unease? It does for me.
People today don’t understand how weird this situation is. Each of us lives in a world where it is almost illegal to be poor, as George Bernard Shaw once dreamed. We might not have any money, but we are all told we can be aristocrats. The system shoves blue pills down our throats about “believing whatever you want to believe.” Blue pills are in every Instagram post, movie dialogue, advertising billboard and OE story from your friend.
This lie – the idea that everyone can and should be an aristocrat – is the river supplying the great pool of emotional support for dumb ideas like socialism. People always think that, come the Revolution, they will be the ones sipping wine in the new utopia while someone else shovels the asphalt. Of course, you’re too important for that job. But so am I. And yet the roads still need paving.
If all art is propaganda, according to George Orwell, but some art is not made for everyone, then the propaganda message embedded in that art becomes schizophrenic when it is shown outside the target audience. I think this explains why the new Matrix movie bombed horribly. To date, it has grossed a measly $30 million in the US and $100 million worldwide.
When they made the first Matrix, the Wachowskis were officially males: Larry and Andy. I will humbly suggest that only real males could have made a film like that. And it was this authenticity that boosted the original movie to a resounding box-office success. You can fool a person, but you can’t fool millions of individual vectors pointing in different directions. No art can ever do that.
It is easy to think that if you’re seeing a movie, then it’s made for you. But when it comes to art, you are always more likely not to be the intended audience. Just because you spent $18 on a ticket does not mean the movie is meant for you. The same goes for politics. Art and politics are sometimes meant for you, but generally speaking, the entire game is just a coded conversation between groups of nobles who are not like you and who care about things you don’t even know how to care about.
There is always a coded conversation occurring. If you are not a noble, then there is a whole world of art and culture that is simply not for you – and vice versa, by the way. I can’t tell you the specific coded conversation happening in the latest Matrix movie, but it has something to do with no one questioning that the Wachowskis are really women – Lana and Lilly, not Larry and Andy.
But according to the aristocratic coded conversation of “believe whatever you want to believe,” they are women. To nobles like the Wachowskis, the blue pill is the ideal. Transgenderism represents the kind of possibility only available to aristocrats who do not need to worry about money and can be anything. Nobles don’t want to “break out of the Matrix,” they built the damn thing.
The fantasy of the Matrix movies is not about escaping; it is about grasping your full potential with no consequences for failure. It is a movie made by and meant for an audience whose only purpose in life is self-actualisation. The Matrix is not wish-fulfilment, it is a warning that the red pill is akin to taking true, self-sacrificial social responsibility – the nightmare of any aristocrat.
Just like the Wachowski’s transgender choice, inauthenticity is at the core of being an aristocrat. Inauthenticity is the way peasants expect aristocrats to want to live. Aristocrats like the Wachowskis exist in a world without real community or a fixed identity. They exist as spiritual nomads, ready for their meandering self-actualisation life journey.
At best, nobles have networks from school, but those connections aren’t inherently deep and binding. The noble classes are fine with being nomads because financial independence offers them the means for coping with deracination. But it’s not a healthy existence for the rest of us who have no hope of reaching escape velocity into another class.
It doesn’t matter what colour pill you take; your peasant story will end the same way. Fly to Waiheke, snap a few pics at a vineyard and post them to Instagram. Pretend to be an aristocrat for a day. Try speaking the aristocratic code about being “liberal.” Become a true believer and say that all humans are equal, that we live in a time of progress, and the Wachowskis are “sisters.”
My generation thought we were taking red pills by believing the lie that aristocracy was available to all people. Now we lack a real human community. Some of us are beginning to see, perhaps too late, that voluntary relationships normal for aristocratic nomads are not for us. We are realising – slowly and to our annoyance – that the strongest ties were always completely involuntary and contingent, such as with our families or to our town.
The most destructive trope of the Matrix movies was the message that everyone needs to be an aristocrat. That it’s ok to “wake up and believe whatever you want to believe.” Acting on this will have real consequences for most of us. After all, someone must pave the roads. Will it be you?
My suggestion is first to stop watching art that wasn’t meant for you. Stop eavesdropping on conversations to which you weren’t invited. Stop speaking the “liberal” language of inauthentic nobles in a vain attempt to turn lead into gold. You are a peasant, not a noble, and that’s fine.
And start making your own authentic art.
We have such little power and freedom in this world that art is our only bullet – art in every sense of the word. Aesthetics are an essential part of any strategy. Art trumps argument because many of our political beliefs boil down to a vision of the person we hope to be. And, historically speaking, all revolutions begin as a fundamentally aesthetic break.
That’s the real red pill.