…as here explained by Robert Wright1 comes from the movie The Matrix: “It’s about a guy named Neo, who discovers that he’s been inhabiting a dream world [i.e., living an illusion, with lots of delusion and an entirely missing of the “out there out-there reality”]. The life he thought he was living is actually an elaborate hallucination. He’s having that hallucination while, unbeknownst to him, his actual physical body is inside a gooey, coffin-size pod—one among many pods, rows and rows of pods, each pod containing a human being absorbed in a dream. These people have been put in their pods by robot overlords and given dream lives as pacifiers.
The choice faced by Neo—to keep living a delusion or wake up to reality—is famously captured in the movie’s “red pill” scene. Neo has been contacted by rebels who have entered his dream (or, strictly speaking, whose avatars have entered his dream). Their leader, Morpheus, explains the situation to Neo: ‘You are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch—a prison for your mind.’ The prison is called the Matrix, but there’s no way to explain to Neo what the Matrix ultimately is. The only way to get the whole picture, says Morpheus, is ‘to see it for yourself.’ He offers Neo two pills, a red one and a blue one. Neo can take the blue pill and return to his dream world, or take the red pill and break through the shroud of delusion. Neo…chooses the red pill.”
Wright goes on to observe: “That’s a pretty stark choice: a life of delusion and bondage or a life of insight and freedom.”
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Now, Neo is “only” a fictional character in a sci-fi movie, but…could we be living in a kind of techno-(and now AI)-driven Matrix? Has life become one of having been given “the blue pill” – i.e., where we are each living in a kind of bondage2 that we are unaware of even being delusion (well, hell, that’s what delusion is!) – and if never seen, can’t be broken?
A qualified “Yes” seems arguably appropriate – meaning there may be “some truth” to the proposition – because “the reality is” that most of us, most of the time, and most often are living – to some greater or lesser extent – with delusion, an inevitable consequence of our ignorance and conditioning…and yes, we are mostly unaware of this.
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So then, what can it mean to “take the red pill” – to seek “a life of insight and freedom?” Some might say it’s that part of life’s journey to seek enlightenment, or – as Wright and the Buddha would say – to awaken.
Taking the red pill is entirely about our human capacity to be proactive, to figure it out (whatever “it” is), and to…make a difference.
