“Hey Samantha, don’t take the Red Pill!” – Grandma’s Boy
If my son wanted to be a fiction writer, I’d send him to college to study journalism.
Have you ever not asked a question because you already knew the answer, but were afraid to hear it? I’m willing to bet we all have. I try to leave occasional breadcrumbs here, especially during my Monday and Wednesday posts, but I’ve stopped short of leaving my posts in the forest near a witch’s house. Besides, I hear Hillary has security guards.
The Truth is shocking. Many times, the Truth isn’t pleasant. I remember coming to one unpleasant Truth realization in college: the college didn’t care if I did well or even if I graduated.
It hadn’t been like that in high school. But in college? I was just a number. It sounds silly to me now, but back then it was quite a realization for me. Gradually, more Truths started showing up in my life. In many cases, I denied them as long as I could, but they eventually became inevitable.
They call this the Red Pill, after the scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets a job painting pills red.
Never let Morpheus do the cooking at a Matrix cast barbeque. There’s a reason they call him Lawrence Fishburne.
Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone. Much of our society is based on covering uncomfortable Truth with pretty little lies. It has always been so, but in 2021 it’s at the very worst that it has been in the history of the United States. People were censored a year ago for telling what are now the (generally) accepted theories about CoronaChan.
The Truth is that we still don’t know where it came from, but vary from any generally accepted truth about COVID on YouTube® and you’ll be censored. Thankfully, YouTube™ is so committed to “truth” that they gave themselves an award for being so courageous about it. Really – there isn’t even a punchline.
Here’s another Red Pill: no one (and I mean no one) is coming to save you. No one (and I mean no one) is responsible for your actions but you. If you can’t save yourself, you’ll just have to depend on luck, which is a crappy strategy. There is no secret cabal of government good guys like Qanon® used to put in his cryptic message board posts. Q is not coming to save you.
I guess QANON was just another 4Chan teller.
Part of the problem with taking a Red Pill is that, once you’re finally awake and aware of how the world works, just like Ebola, you want to share it with people. That’s a bad idea.
The unfortunately named Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus made the silly quote, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and with the new Red Pill knowledge, you want to share it far and wide.
Sadly, Desiderius, the one-eyed man is not king.
As H.G. Wells wrote, the blind people can’t see what the one-eyed dude describes. They think him mad, and if they have a chance they’ll tie him down and remove that silly eye that keeps giving him all of those wild notions and that awful practical joke of leaving the plunger in the toilet. People will fight nearly to the death to keep a pretty lie alive, especially when the Truth is ugly.
I wrote a check to a charity for the blind, but I’m worried they’ll never see a penny of it.
But there is opportunity for an individual once the first real Red Pill hits. Seeking Truth becomes a habit. And you find that Truth exists in many, many more places than you might imagine. When I go to find Truth, I know one place I can find it very quickly.
Truth is in the Iron.
I started lifting again this week for the first time since COVID raised its head. I was stunned at how one of my standard lifts was half – HALF – what it had been 18 months ago.
That is Truth. The Iron is Truth.
Was it at all pleasant to find my strength had dropped that far, that fast?
Of course not.
But it is True.
I gave up on lifting cases of Pepsi® for exercise, it was just soda pressing.
I cannot hide from the Iron. I cannot cheat the Iron. The only things there in the weight room are the Iron, Gravity, and Me. The only thing that changes in that equation is me. I can’t blame the Iron. I can’t blame Gravity.
The Red Pill?
No one will make me physically stronger but me. And the only way I can do that is to wrestle against Gravity with the Iron. And, unless I am quite ill, it will always work.
And here is the hope. Here is where the Red Pill really begins to pay dividends.
I’m the one responsible for:
- my physical state,
- what I eat,
- how I react,
- what I say,
- what I watch,
- how I treat others,
- my own Virtue,
- who I am, and
- where my life ends up.
I’m not responsible for who loves me. I’m not responsible for how much they love me. Those are the output. If I control every bit of input in my life, what happens, happens.
There is nothing, and I mean nothing more wonderful than that realization. It goes beyond winning and losing. It goes beyond the opinions of others.
The downside, of course, is seeing all of the pretty little lies and all of the attempted manipulation. Even worse: the attempts to numb minds, to distract, and to pretend that the new lie doesn’t contradict the last lie. The stunning thing to me is how many people will flitter from one contradictory opinion to another like butterflies in the Sun, with never a thought.
When I take responsibility for myself, I am a changed person.
I was born a male, I identify as a male, but according to Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna®, I identify as a family of four.
That doesn’t mean the battle ever ends. The first struggle is, always, against myself. Why am I weaker?
I had weights at home, but didn’t lift.
Why?
Well, I could make any number of excuses, but none of them matter. I didn’t lift. That was it. So, my choice is simple: will I work to get better every week, or will I be complacent with where I am?
I asked the Iron a question. It told me the Truth.
Now, my choice is how will I answer?
I have only one answer. Sweat.
It’s never lonely when you’ve got Truth for a companion.
“I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.”
– Henry Rollins, Iron and The Soul (RTWT)
Weightlifting has been catharsis for me since I bought my first rusty set of second-hand plates at age 12. Nothing clears my head or cheers me up better than pitching myself against gravity with a bar in my hands or on my shoulders. My sons and I started the 400 pound deadlift club many years back, whose sole requirement for membership is pulling 5×5 at that weight and surviving. I am proud to say that I still belong to it in middle age.
The ultimate competition is one man against himself, and there is no better playing field than a free weight gym. The day that I can no longer pick up something heavy and put it back down under control is the day that I will no longer wish to live. I still have that original pile of rusted BMI cast iron in standard bore. They have not changed in decades, but they have certainly changed me. For the better.
That, my friend, is Truth.
“Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone.”
You said it, buddy. I took the Red Pill 20 years ago when I read The Creature From Jekyll Island. Actually, I read Griffin’s earlier work World Without Cancer, which was also a big Red Pill experience, and a must-read.
Discouragingly enough, I can count on my thumbs the number of people who care about the truth of the world we live in. I’m convinced, but alone. I’ve seen people reach for the Red Pill, even touch it, then change their minds and swallow the blue pill again, and again.
One day it may dawn on them and they’ll realize I was right, just too early. But then it will probably be too late.
It’s hard to watch, but I just find myself getting quieter as the years go by, because if you keep talking, people head the other direction.
And you end up alone.
I am consistently shocked at the pathetic results of my rants, diatribes, tirades, and other inconsequential blatherings.
Despite my best efforts, they remain profoundly unsuccessful.
Nobody cares, nobody listens to me.
[ arms out in hopes of a hug ]
[hug]
Never stop. You’re reaching more than you know.
But you’re here.
So you’re not alone.
Be careful the feds are everywhere posting and they are after the triple paren gang and the Nazi number hashtag sign.
As soon as the rainbow ICBM gets painted the world conquering tour will commence and external enemies tremble in fear of the pretty pink high heeled troops.
The most indispensable government in human history is 30 trillion fiatbux in debt and owned by a hostile foreign power but they are omnipotent and world beating.
Just ask the seven countries that didn’t have a central bank back in 2000 who now have one, oh wait.
Note to those who think that the feds are watching their every online move-your ISP sees everything and they love the best government that money can buy.
Yup. Electronic=compromised, at least if you come under the eye of Sauron. 100%.
Apologies for referencing MiG Pilot two posts in a row, but it seems right.
When Viktor Belenko of MiG Pilot took the red pill as a teenager, the contradictions in the USSR started to become clear and he committed to seeking truth. His commitment ultimately made living in the USSR impossible.
I was middle aged when the red pill was jammed down my throat in September of 2008.
But everything is not made clear at once. Truth is like a Contac with multicolored beads representing activation time.
I should like to meet Viktor some day.
I would suggest you make it happen, if he’s alive. He’d like it, and you’d like it.
Go do it.
I do my lifting in the garden, turning over the soil (and so on), but I also exercise on the stairs. Like the iron, the stairs are truth. You can step on a “stair-type exercise machine” and wiggle your feet up and down any way you like, but when you’ve climbed ten flights of stairs, you’ve climbed ten flights of stairs. Whether it was easy or hard; fast or slow, you’ve elevated your mass in the gravitational field.
100%.
We do what we can. I’m looking forward to the iron tomorrow.
Cyclops, better one than none.
I to left the elliptical and the gym a year ago april just in case. Joining back up here soon. I feel alone after recently helping my daughter move out. Thank God I had some younger help because I became depressed by what I could barely do compared to what I used to do.
Getting old sucks but I still refuse to grow up. No pain no gain and the manual labor around the house has not been enough to keep up with the loss in ability. The older you get the faster the gain disappears and the longer it takes to get it back. Ask me how I know.
God luck and God speed to all of us older farts because no one coming to save me is worrisome except for the locals who are on the same page.
There is a drop off as we age. That’s why I think the 40’s are the ideal age for men – old enough to know better, young enough to do something about it.
Older works, too, though.
During most of the Covid I was recovering from a serious injury and the surgery that followed. Now? No more excuses.
The machine is calling…
Gorram awful puns BTW. 😅
Thank you! Of course, you know that just encourages me . . .
“Oh you silly Truther!, why must you be so negative and always believe those conspiracy theories? The government is going to take care of you! Corporations are evil. Politicians care!” Another great post. We are not alone and I know that thanks to the very internet that they want to ‘regulate’. And the great regression continues.
Ha!
Nope, I’m pulling for the Restoration.
My friends keep telling me I should buy a powered log-splitter instead of continuing to use a splitting maul, sledgehammer and wedges. I’ve given up trying to explain.
I miss, so very much, having a fireplace. I love swinging the sledge and hitting the wedge. Something beautiful in it.
Red Pill of the day: want to share it with people it´s a bad idea.
Yup. The good part? You’re not alone.