“If you meet a Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet a Ghost, kill the Ghost” — Zen koan

I listened to Rob and Jack Napier the other day, discussing life after the Red Pill. Nothing that I haven’t heard before or have thought before. Just one more person, or two, saying it.

The fuzziness of my memory notwithstanding, I got my first taste of the Red Pill in 1989.  (Shit!)  I was in my freshman year at a small college in southeastern Kentucky. (A story for another time.) I was miserable, because I realized that I had been seduced by the glossy brochures and the claims that the “college experience” at the school was what I was looking for. It wasn’t. The college was small, the town was small (Walmart was the main shopping experience . . . let that sink in), and it was in Southern Baptist country. My only saving graces were that my second semester roommate, who was from southern Georgia, and I got along decently and shared many interests, and that the college library was fairly well stocked, so that I could go there most nights and read to my heart’s content. Oh, and there was some pretty good hiking to be had, since the college was in a green valley.

Other than that, I planned my escape the fourth week I was there. I then returned home to northeastern Ohio and attended another small college, but lived at home with my parents and worked at part-time jobs.

My second Red Pill dosage came with the jobs I worked, which were a mix of labor and service jobs, specific to that area and that time (pre-Internet). As to be expected, most of the jobs sucked, but not because of the job itself. (I, for one, tended to enjoy the night shift and work in warehouses.) It was because of the people. As the saying goes, “Work would be great if it weren’t for the people.” How true that was then, and how true that was now.

Part of my Red Pill dosage at that time was learning that the vast hordes of humanity are just there, taking up space, and filling the air with vocal utterances. Words and actions often didn’t match up, even though I expected them to. Of course, this was me still purging the legacy of having grown up in a stable household (yes, I aver to that claim) and dealing with jobs where things were more or less cut and dried. That slowly changed over time, as I was about to find out.

My third Red Pill dosage came when I was in South Korea in the mid-90s, teaching English. The year prior, I was enmeshed in a bad relationship, most of which was my fault. I was immature and didn’t know how to have a relationship, other than showing up and scheduling bedroom fun time. That failed relationship was a severe blow to my sense of identity and agency, and it took me several months to recover. Good thing that I was intending to go over to South Korea when I could, regardless of my state of mind at the time.

My fourth Red Pill dosage came after South Korea, when I undertook a career change from teaching to IT. The difficulties were those that I’ve since encountered again and again: e.g., HR Karens, online systems that create a Kafkaesque environment, waste-of-time interviews where the other person either isn’t the right one to interview you or that person doesn’t know what they want, and radio silence unless the employer says “hell, yes!” and pulls out all the stops to hire you. It’s frustrating, aggravating, debilitating, and dehumanizing. Yet, better you learn this earlier rather than later.

My fifth Red Pill dosage came when I was in the U.S. Army. There, I saw many of the dramatis personae I had seen in years prior, with other, added grotesqueries. I was in my early 30s, so this Red Pill dose was, really, just a booster shot.

So, then this leaves early 2010, when I got out of the Army after six years on active duty, my move here to where I’ve been living for the past ten years, a few job changes, and my introduction to the Red Pill “community” and the players within it.

What’s my assessment? Overall, it’s been great stuff, and I’ve learned a lot. However, the bloom has fallen off the rose, as it does, inevitably, with many things, and now I’m in the same position as Rob, I feel. I’m older now, slower, creakier, more winded, and, I hope, ostensibly wiser. Would reading, listening, or watching other Red Pill content serve me? Maybe, but in ever-diminishing amounts. I check in every once in a while, but I’ve absorbed a lot, to the point where I should be producing more and consuming less.

Which then leads me to my earlier point . . .

If you see Vince, Rob, TJ, Aaron, Rich, Rollo, etc. on the road, kill them.

Not literally, of course, but figuratively.

Kill your gurus, in other words, youz mugs.  Myeah.

Or, to quote Ludwig Wittgenstein:

My propositions serve as elucidations in the following way: anyone who understands me eventually recognizes them as nonsensical, when he has used them — as steps — to climb beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.)
He must transcend these propositions, and then he will see the world aright.

Time to go play in the sun, see.  Myeah.

And take that left turn at Albuquerque.