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Today your humble blogger will stay on the “definition” theme. As a quick refresher, in the last couple of post, we have been introduced to such terms as “platforming”, “normalization”, “tone policing” and “privileged rage”.

Today we add two more. One comes by way of Ann Barnhardt’s excellent blog. The term is “Ghira”. Ghira is defined as: Rage In the Face of Logic. Please venture over to Ann’s website and get the load down on this quite prescient observation. Last word, it is a very post-Modernist thing.

Our term for today is “Red Pilling”. Red Pilling is a situation where a person, upon coming into contact with an objective truth that resonates with that person (pscyche), is so overpowered by the objective truth, that it forces that person to substantively change their approach to the decisions that that person subsequently makes.

Here is how the Urban Dictionary defines the term:

‘Red pill’ has become a popular phrase among cyberculture and signifies a free-thinking attitude, and a waking up from a “normal” life of sloth and ignorance. Red pills prefer the truth, no matter how gritty and painful it may be.

Before we go on, one word about the “red pilling” PROCESS itself. This PROCESS is an “individualistic” PROCESS. Actually, it is very similar to what we call conversion in the Catholic Church. One can say that “red pilling” can be seen as either a first step toward conversion or maybe a “transitional” PROCESS along the individual’s very own “road to Damascus”.

Now this doesn’t mean that the “red pilled” individual will actually travel the entire road, but it is a first step and a rather large one at that. I would also go as far as to say that this is the end point of the second source of the Catholic Faith, i.e. that is known through “natural light of human reason from the things that are made”. 

Everything past this point requires the intervention of a really good priest. 

So that’s the theory.

Now to reinforce the above HYPOTHESIS about what constitutes a “red pilling” EFFECT, I bring you one link and three video.

I will start with a post that appeared at Fr. Z’s website. In the post titled: Wherein another reader does indeed “throw in the towel”. The following passage can be read:

Last weekend, I traveled home to Milwaukee for a wedding. I attended Mass at St. Stanislaus, which I am sure you have visited.[Indeed I have.]In a way, I felt like I was attending Mass itself for the first time ever. This was my first Latin Mass outside of my new small Latin Mass parish.

Again, I don’t understand the Latin Mass. But I feel dedicated and energized by my experience to understand it the way so many in my generation understand it.

If we want to fix the world, we have to [with reliance on the grace of God] fix ourselves. I have known for a long time that this is something I needed to do. And I am going to figure it out.

So what we can observe in the above passage is that an individual, upon coming into contact with an objective Truth that resonated with his psyche, is forced to substantively change his approach to the decisions that this person subsequently makes, i.e. attend the proper Catholic Mass in this case.

What we see in the above example can be considered a “supernatural” red pilling EVENT.

And now for an example of a “natural” red pilling EVENT. On the You Tube channel, I found a new “personality” who is producing video about her own individual “conversion”. Now this conversion is strictly limited to the that part of our Faith that is known through “natural light of human reason from the things that are made”. 

The individual goes by the name of Robyn (hope I spell it correct) and her channel is called CRITICAL CONDITION. The background of this limited conversion is that this young lady, upon moving to Ireland, was unhappy because the types of people she was meeting were of what we call the TRANSRATIONAL variety. In other words, they were what is commonly called Social Justice Warriors or leftists. So Robyn adopted their “belief system”, but deep down inside, she was not happy about it.

Robyn was in this unhappy state for the better part of four years. What changed her life, i.e. the red pilling EVENT, was  due to coming across a video produced by Dr. Jordan Peterson.

I will stop with the story here and will embed three of Robyn’s videos. They are approximately 18:00 long and worth the watch. I will start with her first video, where she explains here conversion. I will include the follow-up video of the relief she had that the first video really resonated with others on You Tube. And the third video is her application of one of Dr. Peterson’s metaphor in her own relationship with her father.

NB: What I have come to understand is that the “Rescuing the Father” metaphor can be viewed as a sort of half way house into the full Catholic Faith. The “Rescuing the Father” metaphor comes from the literary work Pinocchio. The father figure, as explained by Jordan Peterson, appears to be nothing more than the First Person of the Most Holy Trinity, and it is not the individual who saves the father, but rather it is the individual who becomes “re-aquainted” with the Father. But more on that in a follow-up post.

So for your viewing pleasure, I bring you Robyn of the CRITICAL CONDITION You Tube Channel:

  1. The CONVERSION

2. Post CONVERSION

3. Application of rational thought

Concluding, what I think is important to understand, and is quite evident in the above three videos, is the state of mind of your typical individual from the age demographic commonly referred to as MILLENNIALS. We can observe that these children have been completely destroyed by the educational establishment. Furthermore, as in the case of Robyn, she came from a broken home, which only exacerbated her fragile emotional condition.

However, what is also apparent from the above videos is that, that part of our Faith that comes from that which is known through “natural light of human reason from the things that are made” is so powerful, that it can breach any ideological filters or blockades that the eduction establishment has been able to put up over the span of that child’s formative years.

What is also striking about these videos is that an intellectually honest person, when coming into contact with basically one video (Dr. Jordan Peterson) and being introduced to a number of definitions (how Thomist?) contained in that video, was able to reason out a quite rational understanding of OBJECTIVE REALITY and their predicament in that REALITY.

Now this above conclusion by no means implies, that this is the end of the road for Robyn. She has found some good advice that will put some MEANING back into her life. To be more precise, the Peterson advice will provide her with a better, more natural, rational and individualistic definition of MEANING than that which she had before. If she had any at all, that is to say.

But she still needs the help of a good priest to fill in the rest of the missing blanks in order to give her life true MEANING, not to mention set her on the road to working out her “salvation in fear and trembling”.

But this is a personal decision, and as we know from the Catholic Canon, Our Lord came to save pro multis…

So the takeaway from the above is that “red pilling” could just describe the first step toward salvation…