(no subject)

[scottopic]

As in The Matrix, if you had access to the Red Pill and the Blue Pill -

You take the blue pill and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever you want to believe.
You take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.

Knowing full well what it means, would you ~make~ people take the red pill?
However you like to answer: as if you're just speculating about being a character in the movie, if you want to take it as metaphors for things in "real life", if you think "real life" is a Matrix of sorts - mechanical, spiritual, mental, whatever.

Do you? Do you not? Why or why not?
I know the "right" answer to this. Someone argue for me the "wrong" one.

---

Equilibrium is restored.

Decent chance of showing up to the Masquerade tonight.

Comments

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

My answer is "no" in pretty much any context. I could argue that side all day, but since I suspect it's the "right" answer it's not all that interesting to you.

I could probably argue the other side, perhaps even convincingly, but I'm not up to the task of switching into "I don't actually believe what I'm saying" mode right now. Sorry. Maybe later...

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Damn you!

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

Okay, fine.

Forcing the red pill down people's throats is an act of self-defense. Sure, they may have been happy ignorant slaves, and you've taken away the only life they've even known and given them a shit-hole of a new one that they never asked for... but it's better than killing them. And with the Machines out to destroy you and everyone you care about, your choices are 1) stop them by unplugging everyone, 2) stop them by killing everyone, or 3) die.

Or, how about this:

Morpheus' spiel about choice and his almost-but-not-quite deep regret over freeing someone older than they normally take is a bunch of self-serving sanctimonious crap. Cipher had it dead right - "If I'd known the truth I would have told him to shove that red pill up his ass!" Anyone would. That's why Morpheus is all "no one can be told what the Matrix is" and "remember, I only promised you the truth" and blah blah blah wa waa wa waa waa waaa... Morpheus *is* making people take the red pill - not through force, but through deception. He's a fraud and a phoney and the one he's fooling the most is himself. Like most liberals, he's come up with noble-sounding justifications to protect himself from the knowledge that he's fucking people over royally.

But you know what? He's still doing the right thing. He'd be better off ditching the lame feel-good self-righteousness (along with the whole shaman-mentor-prophet role he's written himself into), but nonetheless getting as many people as possible to take the red pill is a good thing - whether by force or deception or honest persuasion is irrelevant, although persuasion probably won't work very well ("You want me to give up steak and Versace for glop and rags?").

People of true worth and value will appreciate truth and freedom once they have it, and until they have it they can't possibly understand it well enough to appreciate it. Morpheus is right about that part - you have to be shown. If I just tell you, you'll stay inside. Once you see it, you'll be glad I got you out. How can any of us in good conscience *not* get as many people out as we can?

If rejects like Cipher can't deal with truth and freedom once it's been given to them, screw them. The problem is we can't tell beforehand who's going to be happy and who's going to have issues. The rights of the Ciphers of the world to be ignorant and blissful don't even come close to outweighing the rights of the rest of us to be freed from the prisons we can't even see. Besides, those that miss their "20th-century" creature comforts will get over it in time; they'll learn to appreciate what freedom has to offer. The desire to return to the Matrix is nothing more than the desire a child has to return to the womb. They'll outgrow it.

And they'll thank us later.

Better?

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

I love you, Eddie.

I am ~so~ looking forward to Wednesday.

[adrienmundi]

Something in that makes me slightly uncomfortable. I think it's what looks like the presumption that one's red-pillness is "right", or that the keys to one's locks are the same keys to others, and will open similar vistas. In other words, I'm not sure your truth and freedom are my truth and freedom, particularly the former (I think we have overwhelming overlap on the latter).

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

Something in that makes me slightly uncomfortable.

God, I sure hope so. It makes me all creepy and icky inside.

Excellent analysis of the argument's flaw. Care to tackle the self-defense proposition? That one may be too dependent on movie-as-literal-context to be any fun, though.

[adrienmundi]

It's not 'self defense' technically, as there are people outside the matrix, and there were prior to Morpheus getting pilled, too. That life can and does exist out of it is a given. To my memory, the machines only took an interest in Zion when it became large enough to be a threat, so in a sense, forcing the red pill onto others is anti-survivalist.

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

Shoots and SCORES! Well done.

[scottopic.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Eddie presented one of the few responses which followed my ALL IMPORTANT :D directions of 'give me another view'.

He grudgingly accepted, and made much fun.

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

She'll thank me later.

[adrienmundi]

The thanks was implicit; take the mauve pill of inference!

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

Curse my red-blue colorblindness!

[chapel-of-words.livejournal.com]

This is written within the scenario presented - that you know all about the Matrix and what it means. But without that knowledge Morpheus could be the great deceiver of truth - the pill nothing more than an extended illusion. Do you still take it without the certainty of knowledge that it is the truth?

Tim C.

[servingdonuts.livejournal.com]

Uh oh, you've changed Scott's question on him. Or rather, on me. Not "do you make others take it" but "do you swallow the damn thing yourself in the first place".

Answer #1: see Tim's reply below.

Answer #2: see Daecon's reply below.

Answer #3: I dunno. Ask me again when you've got a red pill for me to take. Leaps of faith can't be planned in advance - that would make them "plans".

[chapel-of-words.livejournal.com]

So I did...my bad. =)

Tim C.