Beyond the Red Pill - A Group Project
Share Your Analogies and Metaphors for Now
First of all, Happy Human Rights Day celebrating the 1948 signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, spearheaded by Eleanor Roosevelt, and the day of the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremony in Oslo. Many people are not aware of the UDHR. This is a sacred day. Do something to secure our human rights.
Check out my recent piece, Covid and Human Rights Day: Let's Make Human Rights Come Alive. I offering a special sale on LIVING RIGHTS: MAKING HUMAN RIGHTS COME ALIVE Activity Book and Journal, for ages 9 - 109. Reduced from $19.48, the year of the UDHR to sale price $15.83, the birth year Hugo Grotius, the Dutch Jurist who birthed international law. Go here https://www.consciouspolitics.org/livingrights and get free downloads for the e-book pages or here to Amazon to purchase or get free downloads of some of the pages and a human rights cards to print and cut out.
This special sale from Human Rights Day until December 16.
Each of the movies below deals with the violation of human rights and freedoms.
Beyond the Red Pill - A Group Project
We are living in an archetypal drama. Mythological themes reflect the collective unconscious, like a collective dream. By analyzing them we can make the unconscious conscious. Perhaps solutions that appear in these stories inform us.
Let’s use the “wisdom of the crowd” and see what emerges from your associations.
Resonating Metaphors - The Matrix
The “Red Pill”from the Matrix movie, has become a dominant metaphor for those of us aware of dark forces shaping our reality while our friends and relatives are drinking Kool Aid.
Thanks to Craig Campbell, who replied to my first Substack article on Ivermectin, for sending me this clip from the Matrix about the Red Pill.
These times also trigger associations to other movies. I thought it would be fun for us, and community building, to share ideas. Please post in the comments any movies, myths, fairy tales or archetypes that remind you of now and why.
Each reveals different aspects of our current “reality” and may give us ideas about the pathway out of this.
The Truman Show
This 1998 psychological comedy-drama made such a deep impression that there is a syndrome named after it. The Truman Show delusion, or syndrome, “is a type of delusion in which the person believes that their lives are staged reality shows, or that they are being watched on cameras.” (Google).Go figure!
Here is the Storyline
“Since birth, a big fat lie defines the well-organised but humdrum life of the kind-hearted insurance salesman and ambitious explorer, Truman Burbank. Utterly unaware of the thousands of cleverly hidden cameras watching his every move, for nearly three decades, Truman's entire existence pivots around the will and the wild imagination of the ruthlessly manipulative television producer, Christof--the all-powerful TV-God of an extreme 24/7 reality show: The Truman Show. As a result, Truman's picturesque neighbourhood with the manicured lawns and the uncannily perfect residents is nothing but an elaborate state-of-the-art set, and the only truth he knows is what the worldwide television network and its deep financial interests dictate. Do lab rats know they are forever imprisoned?”—Nick Riganas
He is not aware that he is living an illusion constructed by someone else until he bumps up against reality. Even their set had a limit. Hmmm.
Stepford Wives, 1975 and 2004
Many of us are wondering what happened to our friends’ brains. Even the most brilliant have zero curiosity and seem to have lost their critical thinking. They all have the same uniform responses, “follow the science,” “safe and effective,” “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” mindlessly conforming to serve the patriarchy, aka Big Pharma and Big Tech.
I’d say one major difference is that Stepford Wives are bland and passive, that our friends and relatives who are under the spell of mass hypnosis suddenly have a license to be hostile. I find the near uniform tone and attitude of contempt and disdain shocking. People I have known for years and decades, who have never, ever, ever had a hostile tone suddenly do, all in a very similar way.
Based on the 1972 novel by Ira Levin (Rosemary’s Baby), The Stepford Wivesfollows Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross), a New York City photographer whose husband, Walter (Peter Masterson), persuades her to move to Connecticut. There, they and their two children settle in the idyllic town of Stepford, which has an unnatural number of bland, smiling women in long skirts. (Masterson’s real-life daughter, Mary Stuart Masterson, made her film debut as Joanna and Walter’s 7-year-old.) Joanna and best friend Bobbie Markowe (Paula Prentiss) grow suspicious as they watch new friends like Charmaine Wimpiris (Tina Louise) change personalities overnight, transforming into obedient male fantasies.
The Greek Myth of Icarus
I am thinking that those megalomaniacal forces of darkness, the mysterious pathologically greedy, powerful people behind the scenes, who Catherine Austin Fitts calls “Mr. Global” are flying too close to the sun.
The myth of Icarus is about punishment for mortals who try to pass the line from man to God.
There are signs that they are starting to lose it, even as we are trying to figure out who they are. Let’s look for signs of their wings melting and their fall into the sea.
What Are Yours?
Please share in the comments. I am curious to know other stories that reflect something of the archetypal drama we are living through.
Post Publication List of Suggestions from Comments -
It is now 12/11. I am grateful for people’s ideas and love feeling an evolving community, which is essential to get through this. I had an idea about a movie club. I don’t know how to do it logistically but one of you might. I think since V is for Vendetta has the most votes we could start with that. Let me know if you want to help organize it. We might as well have as much fun as we can together.
I will try to add to this list from the moment section as I am able - V is for Vendetta came up several times, also in an interview with Jessica Rose and Gal Shalev.
Nina
V for Vendetta
Children of Men with Clive Owen and wow! Powerful movie. Cuaron (director) at his best and so prescient.
Idiocracy with Luke Wilson is a definite.
Utopia. TV show on Amazon Written by Gillian Flynn and has John Cusack playing a Bill Gates like character. It’s really perfect and just… trust me watch it before they take it down.
Ms P
"Wanda Vision." On the surface is suburbia .. underneath, there is a whole other world happening that most can't see.
"Lottery" - how there are those vials that contain the death shot, and how if it happens to be a child, the banal crowd chants, "But it's for the greater good.”
Grasshopper Kaplan
Logan's Run, taking stab jab is like the Carousel where one weent to die
Kore
The series … Person of Interest. I watched it when it first came out and thought it had a prophetic tone. I pulled the series out to watch again and it made the hair rise on the back of my neck. … Person of Interest is rather terrifying. The storyline runs, a Supercomputer developed to analyze data patterns in surveillance for the US government to identify impending acts of terriorism. The computer can also be used to identify and protect ordinary citizens. The people who are using the info for good become the targets when another artificial intelligence, a malevolent one, comes online and with the full, secretive backing of the US government, begins surveilling and manipulating the lives of all towards its “diabolical purposes “—- including relentlessly hunting down those who oppose.
Jack McJackers
Writes McJacker’s Newsletter ·15 hr ago
Zoolander: When Mugatu (Will Ferrell) screams "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"
The series … Person of Interest. I watched it when it first came out and thought it had a prophetic tone. I pulled the series out to watch again and it made the hair rise on the back of ny neck. They say.. I’m probably remembering it wrong … but something to the effect that Life mimics Art. And in this regard Person of Interest is rather terrifying. The storyline runs, a Supercomputer developed to analyze data patterns in surveillance for the US government to identify impending acts of terriorism. The computer can also be used to identify and protect ordinary citizens. The people who are using the info for good become the targets when another artificial intelligence, a malevolent one, comes online and with the full, secretive backing of the US government, begins surveilling and manipulating the lives of all towards its “diabolical purposes “—- including relentlessly hunting down those who oppose. Gives me shivers and magnificently done especially as you get deeper into the plot. I agree with another post re Children of Men, also V for Vendeta. I am so encouraged by your efforts… I read and then do my best to connect with others, gently encouraging connections and upending status quo. I’ve asked intelligent people very simple questions about what’s happening and seen pure terror cross their face and then witnessed their mind shut down and the “recording/group mind” reply. There is an awareness out there…. and those that sense are afraid. I know one leg of the way forward is to keep the heart open and the love flowing so that we can interconnect and keep helping/encouraging one another and keep the process growing. If fear takes too deep a hold and the division too deep it will only be harder. Thank you Diane for your work which takes dedication and love. You do the work while carrying a sacred burden…your health and whatever personal issues. This is how we stay strong no matter what our own personal issues and private lives. xx
Zoolander: When Mugatu (Will Ferrell) screams "I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!"