Category: Origins of Blue Pill

This is Part 2 of the Origins of Blue Pill mega article.
Introduction
Part one
Part three
Orientation

In this essay, we aim to show that Blue Pill is the base state of the human mind. We will do so by exploring the cultural output of prehistory. Prehistory was the era less tempered by man-made technology; it is a pure source of human nature. Modern sociologists do the same by studying hunter-gatherer societies; we can one-up this and study the source itself.

For a proper analysis, we need to be careful. Cultural output is highly contextual to the worldview of the people who produced it. It is not enough to repeat stories of old; we need to see the world as they saw it. Their assumptions, biases, and ambitions. In a sense, we need to break into their mode of thinking. It is Empathy in action.

When we analyze culture and myth like this, a picture becomes very clear. Society transitioned from a mythopoetical worldview in pre-history to the structured logical worldview of Ancient Greek Philosophy. This is no joke; society cannot just randomly move between the two. Entrenched interests and cultural lag fundamentally resist change. This was even more true in societies of old, where vengeful Gods and Spirits punished trespassers and deniers.

Reframing the concept, the society transitioned from artificial worldviews designed by the tribe for the tribe to a society that was able to understand and interact with the objective world. Society transitioned from one that was ruled by Social Programming (Blue Pill) through religion and convention, to one that was able to see the real picture.

This process was finalized with the establishment of Greek Philosophy. The first truly Male worldview. It was a psychological battle as much as a practical one. More importantly, it generalizes quite cleanly. The same mental models that dominated pre-history are predictable and present in any social programming setting.

The Setting

We will follow Amaury de Riencourt [Women and Power in History] and his groundbreaking historical analysis based on Masculine and Feminine ideology. Riencourt made fundamental progress when he realized systemic gender differences exist not only on practical terms, but also become internalized into the psyche of each sex.

A disclaimer: Amaury was greatly inspired by Carl Jung, who theorized that both men and women have a male and female part in their soul (anima and animus). This is not men vs women, it is a Masculine and Feminine worldview.

Each gender has biological differences. These are subtle attitude adjustments. For example, males lean towards logic, while females lean towards relationships. Females are naturally focused on nurturing and raising children; men are naturally focused on facing the world (metaphorically: hunting for the tribe). Later in life, these attitude adjustments are further compounded by actual events. Women get period and childbirth cycles. Men get into initiation rituals. 

In short, each gender has fundamentally different brain chemistry and a different societal reception. The schism is deep enough to define completely different challenges and objectives for each gender. Collectively, these create the different outlooks and, at a macro level, define the Male and Female psychology. This was Riencourt’s groundbreaking innovation. Grasping and explaining this psychology. 

Things get horrifying when this psychology turns into a worldview. Let us think about this, people explain life based on their feelings. For example, “a big bad bear” is scary because it threatens survival, a cat is “cute” because it is non-threatening. Emotions are an active part of the human experience, and they cannot be separated from perception (remember Frame ?). 

And that is the key: psychology and human experience are interlinked. Therefore, myth, which is the poetic expression of perception, explains life outlook! If this life outlook is similar among many people, it becomes culture. It is a connected chain from biology → mythical expression → culture.

Because the Male and Female archetypes are deeply antithetical, the viewpoints they imply cannot co-exist. Society is stratified in eras when one or the other prevails. When the Male or the Female spirit prevails, it imposes its psychosynthesis into the society’s software. The archetypes themselves become the psychological archetypes of the society. 

More importantly, because these changes originate biologically and structurally, they are constantly present. The same spiritual battle that played out in prehistory is present in today’s gender wars. It has even played out multiple times since the dawn of civilization. The modes of expression might differ from era to era, but the tactics and the goals are constantly the same.

And here is the hack: because the need arises from the soul, once we analyze the first battle of pre-history, our model is accurate enough to explain all later variations as well. Once we identify the mental models of the original Social Programming, we have the blueprint for all.

Let us now analyze these psychologies.

Feminine spirit

There are 4 keywords that define the Female psychology. Cyclicality, Pivotal events, Purpose, and connection to Mysticism:

• Women get purpose from their mothers: They have someone to look up to. Someone to model and copy.
• Cyclicality: Comes from the period, repeated pregnancy, and the life and death cycle in human settlements. Life works in eternal repeated patterns.
• Pivotal events are given by nature: Women enter a new stage in life from different events: first period, loss of virginity, childbirth, and menopause. All these are given by nature and need not be worked towards.
• Mysticism: I.e., a connection with the world that requires no concrete logic. 

All in all, the Female spirit places an emphasis on being, not doing. An emphasis on the here and now. Females perceive time as eternally repeated cycles.

Masculine spirit

The male keywords are Purpose and Logic:

• Males cannot look up to their mother: The mother is not a role model.
• There are no pivotal events in a male’s life. Male needs to create them.
• The need for understanding and reason. 

All in all, the male spirit puts an emphasis on doing, not being. Males view time as a metaphorical arrow pointing linearly through time.

The grand scale

We have a model of two conflicting psychologies. Let us take a look at the zoomed-out picture before jumping into the details.

The default of mankind was the Matriarchy. Prehistory was dominated by Female psychology, which provided all of life’s explanations. This was not a fluke; our core thesis is that Female psychology is the default human psychology. 

During the early Neolithic, a revolution was slowly brewing, which culminated with the establishment of the Male spirit into the world. After that, history can be analysed into periods where the Male spirit has an edge and where the Female spirit has an edge. 

We will focus on the conditions that freed humankind from this first Great Matriarchy. That first step from Female to Male psychology is indeed the most significant because it broke the eternal Matriarchy’s grasp (of at least 100,000 years) and established the oscillating cycle. There was a very improbable sequence of events that led to this, and it is highly documented in art and myth.

As we will see, Feminine worldviews lead to a life akin to “Garden of Eden” that Rousseau hinted at. Carefree and relaxed existence… but deprived of meaning, adventure, and progression. This is a feature and will be explained later. Masculine worldviews, when they edge out, lead to innovation and, advancement of science. These societies are also hyper-competitive and hierarchical.

Both worldviews can have their advantages and disadvantages, but Beauty, as defined in the previous chapter, can’t exist under a Feminine worldview. Because archetypically, the Female worldview aims at just being, the Male worldview is the one aimed at becoming.

This ancient Matriarchy was the first Blue Pill of the world. It had trapped mankind into its “Garden of Eden” style of life. The aimless existence of living just to survive. The life of just being and propagating.

Female domination to Patriarchy

We will now provide the macro-level roadmap of our historical period of interest. As we already said, the Female worldview dominated until the Neolithic and the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago. After that, the pendulum starts to shift towards the Male worldview, which culminates with the birth of Philosophy around 500BC. 

Modern humans have a history of at least 100,000 years as homo sapiens, and our way of life was stratified by the presence of the Ice Age. This is the dividing line in our history: the shift from the Glacial to Interglacial period. Let us take a look.

Glacial Period

We begin with the Glacial period. We currently live in the fourth Ice Age. These are periods where Earth is unusually cold, glaciers expand, water freezes, etc. Our current Ice Age is special because it works in phases. It breaks down into glacial periods, spanning 100,000-150,000 years, and interglacial periods (current), that span 10,000-15,000 years. The former is when glaciers advance, and everything freezes; the latter is when the climate resembles today’s levels.

This has been going on for quite a few cycles, and Homo sapiens certainly was alive during the last glacial period. All the evidence suggests that humans were mammoth hunters during this period. They lived semi-nomadically, i.e., they had a permanent home base and hunted on trips nearby.

In terms of religion, we can infer widespread belief in mysticism (magic). Such evidence comes from modern hunter-gatherers. Magic is used to explain hunting variance; this is widespread and systematic. This is further supported by the artifacts we have found, the so-called “Venus figures”. These are female religious dolls found from Spain all the way to Vladivostok (surprisingly, supporting a global mono-culture).

In terms of lifestyle, we can infer clan dominance. Extended family networks that work like tribes. Women are mobile and move between tribes; men stay on their home soil. This environment suggests female dominance, as females always do well in standing social environments. A modern example is the East Asian extended family, where the true power always sits with the mother-in-law.

Now take one and two together, and we have the first evidence of the ancient Matriarchy. A mysticism-based religion with only female figures and a social environment that promotes female dominance through relationship control. 

Adding salt to the wound, it is also plausible that humans hadn’t realized the role of the father in mating. Simply, people thought males had no role in procreation. The pregnancy cycles are too long to establish the causality between sex and childbirth, leading directly to a divine elevation of women. 

From their society’s viewpoint, women had a biological purpose: childbirth. This was the miracle of nature and should be worshiped. On the other hand, males didn’t have a biological purpose. Their purpose was only social, i.e., hunting and protecting the tribe. This was a big meta-mismatch of power in the roles of each gender. Males were totally lost in terms of purpose.

Therefore, it is no wonder that the Male worldview was suppressed in art and myth. This makes the changes we outline below truly baffling.

Neolithic Epoch

There is a psychological revolution brewing from the start of the Interglacial era. The retreat of the glaciers started to allow new ways of living, for example, nomadic hunting, farming, and gardening settlements, etc. 

The psychological reversal finalized during the Neolithic era. The Male role is elevated disproportionally through tool discovery and innovation. By inventing male-only devices, famously the plow, but also animal domestication, sailing, the wheel, and metal crafting. 

The role of the Male rises first socially, then spiritually, and the cycle finally completes with its worldview established in thought. This was the discovery of Philosophy. The monumental achievement that broke the first Blue Pill of the world. 

This process was slow to happen, taking at least 8000 years from the establishment of the first agricultural settlements to the conception of Philosophy. It is also the era we have the most archeological evidence, and if analyzed correctly, it shows the true psychological battle behind the scenes.

Myth and culture under Matriarchy

In our historical rundown, we had made some sweeping claims. It is now time to provide evidence to support our observations. 

The aim is to establish the mental models under the Female worldview. We will do so by analyzing myth and cultural output. This is twofold. First, because these are the strongest avenues through which ideology is expressed. Second, because we are lacking any other forms of archaeological evidence. Simply put, archeologically, pre-history is a dark space.

This is a so-called mythopoetic analysis. The art of inference of mental models based on their artistic output. It works surprisingly well in social sciences because outcomes do depend on psychology. To paraphrase Carroll Quigley: “If the apple wants to fly, this won’t make gravity disappear. If society wants war, however, this makes war all the more likely to happen”.

In early history, females clearly dominated myth. All the archeological evidence shows female Goddesses and a total absence of anything male. Whether figures, male organs – phallus objects – or anything remotely devoted to men is completely absent. Everything we have found is female or female-related. Here is some archeological evidence:

In catalhuyuk, the oldest city we uncovered

Knossos – Minoans

Twin godesess – Malta

Demeter (used to represent Gaia) – Greece

Finally: The Mother Earth recurring legend. Repeating in every geographical longitude and latitude.

The last one, the Mother Earth myth, is particularly interesting. This is the Goddess who gives birth by herself, no males needed. It is only unique to prehistory. In contrast, later religions made it pretty clear to include male figures in the Pantheon. This was not done covertly; deliberate acts of insemination were often included. But for pre-history, there is a total absence:

The Greek Gaia, who created the world

The babylonian Tiamat that the world is created from her body

The minoan Diktyna, the lady with the snakes

The Sumer Ninsurhag

The Egyptian Hathor

Greek Hera gives birth to Hephaestus by herself without Zeus.

All variations of the same myth. A supreme Goddess without a husband. It has even survived into Christianity through the Virgin Mary. 

This is the evidence that strongly supports the idea that we hadn’t discovered the role of the father. Simply put, we didn’t know we needed men to produce life. This is also the unifying piece of this section. This worldview naturally elevates the woman to mythical status. The mythical expression we described makes absolute sense under those lenses.

What is a father?

Let’s put this under the microscope. It is a key concept to understand. What evidence do we have of the absence of knowledge of the father?

Evidence from Culture

• Modern Polynesian: the word for father doesn’t exist.
• Modern Pygmies: “Sperm is food for the babies”.
• Modern Maori: “The moon is the real husband of all wives.”
• Ancient Chinese: “Babies come from dragon tears”.
• Ancient Greeks: “Before Cecrops, Athenians didn’t know their father”.

What does it say for their worldview if the word “father” doesn’t exist or is downplayed?

---

Evidence from Mythology

As we discussed earlier, total absence of male Gods, statues, and sacred objects. What does it say for a society if the supreme Goddess is always female and many times gives birth totally unassisted?

---

Evidence from Social Life

• For many, even modern, hunter-gatherers, the father is only a convention. The entire village raises the baby.
• Fathers, in particular, are chosen arbitrarily by wives and can also change.
• Life is usually expressed as originating from the forest, caves, rivers, the sea, or the sky and the spirits that live there. It is channelled to the woman from there.
• The recurring belief that life originates from Earth and ends on Earth. The myth of reincarnation fits here.

Aside 1: Examples for the third bullet point are clearly expressed in Greek mythology. Zeus would often transform in rain, a bull, or even air to inseminate women.

Aside 2: The last bullet point is a clear manifestation of Female cyclicality. Burial is Female cyclicality. The cycle of life begins and ends with Mother Earth.

Now, take a moment and consider this groundbreaking evidence from our modern Red Pill lens. All male-female interactions are meant to work in the absence of (conscious) knowledge of childbirth. Men and women (consciously) really care just about sex. This is the extent that motivates both sexes into interacting with each other. 

Childbirth itself might as well be spirits putting babies in women’s bellies. This is what your mind understands on a practical level. This is the basis of modern hunter-gatherers that seem to practice “free sex” instead of marriage and the transactional model of male provision of the West.

The transactional model of courtship is fiction. There is no stress for offspring survival under our natural social system, the tribe. Evolutionary psychology has missed the mark here. How else could it even be? The “provision” model can only exist for the last 10,000 years with the dawn of agriculture. For hunter-gatherers, the tribe shares everything; there is no worry for resources that are not collective. The whole village raises the baby. 

The modern “provider” is not hardwired into human females; there haven’t been enough generations for it. In reality, Wealth is just a symbol of status (the dominant one), and women care for status. The economic “value” of wealth is just a side effect and non-existent in women’s minds. The gold-digger exists because men want it, not women. They want a reward for doing well in the “Western” society – getting rich – while ignoring all other sources of value.

The early human mentality

All this creates a paradox for the modern mind. What is the thinking of such a culture? How did these people view the world? What implications do their myths and stories have?

So far, we have made a model of the collective psychology, the Female worldview, and verified its expression on myth and history. Let us now combine it with a model of the mind itself.

For the following, we also have empirical backing. When Europeans met modern age primitives and hunter-gatherers, they left a significant body of work describing their thinking. 

---

No Cause and Effect relations

Instead, we have Symbol and Phenomenon. The mind connects images and events without connecting logic. For example, a dark crow flies in the sky → we will lose the battle if we attack today. This situation played out at the Battle of Plataea. Read the history; it is hilarious.

Essentially, this is correlation without causation. For those who know neuroscience, remember the old adage “what fires together, wires together” – this is correlation. This is the natural state of the mind.

---

No temporal relations

This is Female cyclicality. We have myths eternally repeated. The rotation of the seasons, the cycle of the moon, the cycle of the day. Life followed natural rhythms.

---

No congruence in thought

Congruence in thought means we have a unified brain. It can recognise itself, and it is stable through time. You means you. You are always you.

Humorous as it may sound, this wasn’t the case. People of old were constantly describing situations in which spirits possessed them. They would sweep their emotions and control them entirely.

This is how Hercules gets possessed by Hera and kills his wife and children. This is how Achilles’ rage is described in the Iliad. There are even claims that people would translate inner monologue as the voice of God, for example, as described in the scripture.

There are many more examples scattered in myths. When people became possessed, they literally became different individuals. This is mind not unified in a single entity.

---

Personal, not impersonal thinking

This has been described as I-Thou vs I-It thinking. The former stands for personal connection, while the latter stands for abstract utilitarian connection. The second is a modern phenomenon. Earlier peoples were assigning emotional states to everything via spirits and petty Gods.

This makes a big difference based on Neuroscience. I-Thou is thinking that involves people; it combines logic with emotions. I-It is totally impersonal. In the brain, each type of thinking is processed in completely different regions with completely different mechanisms. 

There is no status competition with impersonal objects, for example. Also, people solve the trolley problem using different logic depending on their perceived distance from the experiment participants.

---

Blue Pill mythical thinking

If you didn’t read this section on “Thinking” carefully enough, go do it again. This is Blue Pill, this is Social Programming. This is the mental framework that enables both. These are the mechanisms that the myth is built on:

• Personal connections or personification of objects and ideas.
• Repeated eternal cycles.
• Lack of causality, only correlation.
• Forces that take over the mind and make people act like possessed.

Whether you want to call it Disney, ancient Matriarchy, or Communism, you will find the same pattern of thought. Maybe it is not Hercules that Hera possesses his mind and causes him to kill his wife and children. Maybe it’s just a Disney prince who is being possessed by love and goes crazy adventuring to save the princess. 

The core is the same. The mechanisms are the same. This is how the mind understands social programming. Incoherent thought patterns, eternally repeated. The “love that lasts forever”, the “myth of romanticism” that repeats for every couple and every relationship, etc.

This is no joke; this is the core argument of this chapter. I challenge the reader to take these four principles and see how much they explain pop social programming narratives. Take any: 

• Consumerism
• Religions
• Democracy as religion
• Modern economics
• Blank slate

That is why Philosophy was such a monumental achievement. For the first time, it lifted humankind from this condition and presented a world model based on logic and causality. A model based on an objective “nature”, a testable, immutable truth of the world. 

Red Pill does exactly this for the gender dynamics. Only after taking the Red Pill can you see the Blue Pill delusions for what they are. A myth and a fiction. 

The road out of the Matriarchy

What happened to get us out of Matriarchy and into Patriarchy? As we said before, the change was slow. It started socially, evolved spiritually, and finalized with Philosophy. Philosophy is the ultimate expression of the Male spirit. It is a structured, logical system to explain the world. It contrasts highly with the mythical Female mode of expression. 

Let us now showcase the historical and technological forces that enable this.

The Dorian invasions and the Axial Age

Dorians were steppe tribes that invented the chariot. This allowed them to invade the entire world, from Europe all the way to India. Their influence is clear to this modern day, and it is studied via the common linguistic roots.

We have clear historical evidence that all major civilizations were conquered and their entire social structure was re-established in the second millennium BC. Think of the fall of Babylon, the fall of Knossos, the Indo-Aryan invasion of India. These were the Dorians.

This terrifying invention of the chariot has been burned into the annals of history via the Greek myth of the centaur. The half-horse, half-human being, or better put: the view of the chariot from afar.

The chariot requires a rider and an archer, and the charioteers themselves had to spend years in training, eventually establishing a deep bond between them. This is the mythical unbreakable bond between male friends. This friendship has passed into the repeating myth of the horse twin gods. This myth repeats in the Greek Dioscuri (Castor and Pollux), the Sicilian Palici, the Hindu Ashvins (Nasatya and Darsa), the Germanic Alcis, and the Anglo-Saxon Hengist and Horsa. The Romulus and Remus myth (the twin founders of Rome) is a spin-off of this myth.

Dorians were as patriarchal as it gets. The chariot was the basis of their society, and naturally elevated the Male position disproportionately. As they conquered other peoples, they were sowing the seeds that later established the Male spirit into the world. What is particularly impressive is that not only did they promote the Male, but deeply hated the Female. We see the foundation of entire mythologies being rewritten, coinciding with their invasions. For example:

• Ancient Greeks: the new Gods with Zeus (male) as a leader wage war over the Titans, the children of Gaia.
• Egypt: Horus, the male God, inseminates Hathor (the prior Earth Goddess) to give birth to the Sun every day.
• In Mesopotamia, Marduk kills Tiamat.

Psychologically, this implies a trauma at the very core of society. The Dorians didn’t just enforce a new worldview; they entirely crushed the old system and established a diametrically opposite one. This interaction, this trauma, this was the miracle that let the Male spirit free and brought it into the world.

The psychological war of this age can be summarised in the Greek myth of Perseus. Historically, he was a Mycenaean king. In myth, he ventures into the islands to kill Medusa. Well… who was Medusa? The lady with snakes in her head. That is the Minoan Goddess, the Minoan sacred Earth Goddess!

In short, Perseus is the metaphorical spirit of the Dorians. He ventures into Minoan territory to slay the old worldview. Just imagine the mentality that led to such a mythical expression.

Post-invasion world

Therefore, the old worldview is crushed by the Dorians. And it is not only crushed in a geographical pocket, but it is crushed systematically in the entire known world. So… what comes next?

What follows the period of Dorian invasions is what has been named the Axial Age∗. A 500-year window, between 800-300BC, during which all pivotal events that started modern history happened:

• Greek philosophy
• Greek History: Thucydides
• Zoroastrianism (the first Male religion) – Persia
• Confucius and Lao Tse – China
• Buddha and Upanishads – India

This was the Male spirit establishing itself in the world. Let us now trace the spiritual change via Zoroastrianism and the mental change through Philosophy.

The Freedom of the Male Spirit

Before the full emergence of the Male worldview in Greece, the first rupture in the ancient Matriarchy happened in Persia. Zoroastrianism is the earliest known system that replaces the Feminine, cyclical worldview with a linear and moral one. The religion is summarized below:

Ahura Mazda (God) and Ahriman (Satan) are locked in a cosmic struggle across a fixed timeline of history. This battle lasts 9,000 years. 

To eliminate Ahriman, God created men to physically entrap evil into human actions. Men can assist Ahura Mazda in this battle through moral choice. By behaving virtuously, they eliminate a little bit of evil. 

God’s victory is inevitable at the end of history. Hence, God is infinite in time; evil is bounded.

Notice all the unique traits this religion has over prior Female ones:

• Time becomes linear, not cyclical:  History has a beginning and an end.
• Ethics becomes universal: Morality is grounded in reason, not a mythic taboo.
• Myth becomes parable: Symbolic, not literal. Its true purpose is the moral code itself.
• Agency becomes central: Men choose between good and evil. Men realize themselves by behaving virtuously.

Zoroastrianism, for the first time, established Male spirituality into the world. The Male spirit had a clear instrument of expression. This revolution laid the groundwork for the mind to follow via Philosophy.

Greek Philosophy

The importance of Greek philosophy cannot be understated; it will actually be the focus of the next chapter. We will give a detailed description of the forces that brought it into the world. For now, we want to explain the Male mental model. Here are the outcomes of Philosophy, i.e., the Male mode of thinking:

The freedom of mankind from the eternal myth

By structuring thought. Things need a reason to exist and should follow a logical inference through the dimension of time. Think of it like continuity in thought.

The old cyclical and mythical interpretation won’t cut it anymore. Myth itself was viewed as parables and allegories∗.

Consciousness is combined into a single person.

No more spirits taking control over people or gods talking into people’s heads. This, in a sense, introduces accountability and purpose. 

If man’s life is not determined by the whims of the Gods, then he is accountable for his life (locus of control).

Abstract thought begins.

Things can be isolated and analyzed independently. This was the gift of analysis and has carried over in the Western world ever since.

There is a psychological test for this. The rod and frame test. Subjects need to isolate a frame from its background and balance a rod perpendicular to the frame (but not to the background). 

Populations with analytical thought can do this, but as we diverge into primitives with a more holistic style of thought, this task becomes harder. This is Male/Female duality in action.

Cause and effect relationships.

No more correlation, instead causation. This was the beginning of science. In scientific terms, correlation is the observation. This and this happen together. Causation is the explanation, this and this happen together because there is a logical progression from one end to the other. 

Causation is an expression of Male linearity, a sequencing of shorts. I repeat, to showcase the contrast and to showcase how unatural this is: the base state of the mind is correlation. From Neuroscience: “what fires together, wires together”.

---

With this, we have finally squared the circle. This type of thinking, the Philosophical thinking, is the diametrically opposite of the Social Programming thinking we verbalized earlier. 

It is not a coincidence; it is because both come from antithetical worldviews. One is Female, one is Male. Each type of thinking expresses the psychological needs of each gender. Crucially, this Philosophical thinking is the only force that can break Social Programming, because it is compatible with Beauty.

Beauty and Male spirit

Remind yourself of the outcomes of a Female worldview: a relaxed, peaceful, but static society and existence. In contrast, the Male society is hierarchical and competitive. Moralizing this is pointless, but we will establish a deep truth.

The Male worldview is the definition of beauty from Part One. The Male spirit is driven by Beauty. The use of resources to achieve something new, perfect its skills, and innovate. Beauty arises from the male need to become and realize himself. By definition, this signifies the expense of resources for skill acquisition and excellence. That is what “to become” means: to differentiate, to excel. 

The true Male hierarchies are based on skill, they are based on Beauty. Hierarchy as oppression is a perversion of Modernity. This is what the Modern world truly robbed us of. This is what Social Programming robs the world of. Oppression is an outcome of being; it maintains the status quo, the inhibition of action. 

The Axial Age wasn’t a fluke of genius that sprang from nowhere. It was the first systematic search of Beauty. That is why it seems like a golden era to us; it was a unique worldview being established for the first time.

Philosophy was the result of a search for Beauty. Red Pill is a result of a search for Beauty. The quest for Beauty is incompatible with any form of Social Programming. The quest for Beauty is the natural antidote to Social Programming. Ain’t this impressive?

---

This is Part 2 of the Origins of Blue Pill mega article.
Introduction
Part one
Part three
Orientation

This is Part 1 of the Origins of Blue Pill mega article.
Introduction
Part two
Part three
Orientation

The first puzzle piece we need to dispel the prominence of Social Programming is exactly this: proving that life is not a social convention. We will do so by the concept of Beauty. An objective measure of beauty that arises biologically. It transcends culture and conventions. A concept of beauty related to how organisms use their resources.

Against Darwin

We will use a daring argument. Especially, a daring argument for the Red Pill circles. Evolution is the concept of Heredity with Survival and Replication as the drivers. However, Heredity itself was an old idea, even for Darwin. It was known since the very beginning of animal domestication and breeding. By the time of Darwin, humans had shaped the fate of plants (eg, wheat, apples) and animals alike (eg, dogs, horses). This was Darwin’s innovation: figuring out the hidden drivers of nature in selecting who is worthy to pass on their genes. He transitioned from Heredity to Evolution by assigning a driver: Survival and Replication. We will challenge this step; we will argue against Survival and Replication.

Disclaimer: This is the philosophical version: Does Nature impose the S&R firmware, or is it a total accident? Should S&R dictate life, or is it just a byproduct of life? If all chickens refuse to breed from now on, then of course, chickens will go extinct as a species. Evolution works. But the fact that chickens would go extinct as a species doesn’t mandate that they shouldn’t stop breeding.

Evolution’s Blind Spots

To start off, we address the main pitfall of evolutionary psychology. That is, behaviour by its nature is teleological – from Greek “Telos”, end. Meaning it cannot be analysed by itself, without its purpose. For example, “he fetched the milk” makes no sense by itself; you need “…because he was thirsty” or “… to the customer” to give meaning to the action. In its broadest sense, this proves that there can never be social sciences without philosophy.

Why would this cause an issue for EvoPsych? The reason is that trying to assign a purpose to Evolution only leads to wrong conclusions. This was known even in Darwin’s age. It first appeared in his writings that evolution is blind and has no purpose. However, EvoPsych does exactly this; it claims behavior is there to aid S&R. This is a fundamental blind spot at the very center of EvoPsych’s foundations. We will prove this by showing the sketchiness of the concept of survival of the fittest in humans. The concept doesn’t apply as universally and as accurately as it does on other animals.

Survival and Replication on the Microscope

Let’s re-examine the survival of the fittest concept, then. Fittest individuals have a higher chance to pass on their genes, ill-fitted ones have a lower chance to pass them on. On a long time scale, this would lead to ill-fitted traits to disappear, go extinct. Does this concept stand to scrutiny? 

The first part (good genes) is a tautology; we claim that the best genes are the ones that spread quickly, so nothing to do here. The second part, we need to ask ourselves whether the world is naturally scarce to support this argument. Is it really scarce enough to weed out genes that fast to eliminate them from the gene pool? Especially, is it scarce for higher animals, and even more is it scarce for humans?

My personal answer is no. Of course, there is no way of fully proving it, but there is some limited evidence that we have. Homo Ergaster (our ancestor) was already considered an apex predator since 1.6million years ago, and so all human species thereafter. Additionally, contrary to the popular argument, there were many human populations that rejected agriculture altogether at the beginning of history. This was despite knowledge of it [Dawn of Everything – David Graeber]. People decided that staying as foragers and hunter-gatherers was a better life than settling down as farmers. Isn’t that a major contradiction? 

Especially, the start of agriculture followed a period with so much wheat and cereal abundance (in nature) that humans would never need to work to get by [Work – James Suzman]. Actually, this by itself is evidence against Evolutionary Bottlenecks. In short, remove the hard limiting factors that weed out genes, and then the generations needed to eliminate them from the pool grow exponentially.

Darwin and Malthus

Remember, Darwin doesn’t work without Malthus. These philosophies work hand in hand. In a sense, we are arguing against Malthus and his idea that organisms will expand to the ecosystem’s carrying capacity. 

Malthus’ original assumption was that the population doubles every 25 years based on studies on British Colonial subjects. This was a very smart form of measurement, but affected by advanced agricultural techniques introduced by Britain. This led to his assumption that populations grow exponentially and agriculture grows linearly by extending the cultivatable land. For example, doubling the arable land can at most double production of the best farms (depending on the soil quality). Eventually, this leads to famine and collapse as there is not enough food to go around. 

In contrast, modern estimates indicate a population doubling of every 250,000 in our evolutionary past. A fair shot, but way off from Malthus’ calculation. His theory can therefore not be universally applicable. This population doubling was not even limited by environmental resources; it is not indicative of a hard life for the ancient humans. Infant mortality was indeed high until the revolution in medicine and sanitation (pioneered in the West), but discounting infants, life wasn’t that hard for primitives.

Estimates indicate that after a child reaches 15 years of age, then its life expectancy is above 60 in any human society, primitive or not. Historical figures in Greece (start of written history) are known to have lived over 80 years at their death. A number that matches modern levels. Hell, removing agriculture, things only improve. Foragers are rarely malnourished and overall much healthier than agriculturalists. This was the rule until very, very recently. All these point that the whole “Survival of the Fittest” is sketchier than it sounds.

The Darwinian worldview

Darwin describes a specific life: the life at the bottom. The life that forfeits everything just to survive. His theory is incredibly accurate there. We claim that there is life beyond the bottom, life that is thriving. Darwin’s own view of the world was heavily distorted by the historical period. Because this was England during the Industrial Revolution: Slums filled with filthy people. No cleaning and health standards, with people working 16-hour days in terrifying conditions. 

Yes, in this setting, Darwin is 100% correct. But saying that this is human nature is quite a stretch. For any person or slice of population, forfeiting all dignity just to get by, Darwin works as a prior assumption and not as a predictive device. These populations have already accepted those Malthusian conditions (that make Darwin work) just from their mode of living. Darwin didn’t force them into it. 

Darwin’s horrifying assumptions do exist today and in history. But history is also full of heroic rebellions, last stands of people sacrificing everything to defend their ideals, traditions, and culture. Even at the animal level, there are countless examples of species that refuse to breed in a zoo, famously, the white tigers∗. This is certainly not S&R.

Battle for space

Let’s discuss another framework for explaining life. Hereditary without S&R. Heredity is indisputable and cannot be overlooked in any model respecting itself. The driver of it is up for debate. Let’s start looking at the driver as a Battle for Space [Bronze Age Mindset – BAP]. 

If there is free “space” (i.e., resources and energy), it will either become more life in the form of organisms, or it will be used by some organism to develop their abilities. Spare resources will either be used in a Malthus-esque way to increase population, think of it like the ecosystem’s carrying capacity. Or the organisms themselves need more resources than their fair share to develop their abilities. Hence, what would be extra “organic life” is used instead as competence in the organism. 

This makes sense, assuming learning curves in any obtained skill (i.e., not hardwired behavior). For example, to become an expert shooter and win the Olympics (skill and ability), you need years in training using ammo to shoot at dummies (resources). But the work to make dummies and the ammo could have been used, in theory, to produce food, which is more “life”.

Battle for Space in Humans

The creative step is to claim that these dynamics play out in humans. There are humans who, if you feed them resources, will just expand their populations, achieving nothing. The so-called “life of the yeast” – it just expands amorphously. But some humans will use resources to develop their abilities. The latter part is what we call Beauty. 

Therefore, in itself, beauty is a mindset. It is a mindset of using resources to develop one’s own skills. It is the same train of thought that rejects mediocrity. Maybe beauty is the rejection of mediocrity itself. Beauty itself presupposes a non-stressed life. When humans face existential threats, there can be no true Beauty. There is no time or resources for it. 

There is a world of difference between life at the bottom and life that is thriving. The reason is biological and exists in nature. Higher animals, like the wolf, use resources to develop their skills. The life of the wolf is not the same as the life of the rabbit or the fly. There is a qualitative difference. Surviving for the sake of surviving is not worth it, as the Ancient Greeks say. Remember this when you stumble into any Blue Pill version that edges you into mediocrity and conformity.

The chicken or the egg

With this definition of Beauty, we achieved something that biological determinism always misses. Our beauty is contextual and relative. It is relative to the available resources and the society’s (resource) context. This matters! Because we avoid the argument that culture builds on top of biology. This is where all evolutionary arguments end up. Biology shapes culture and culture shapes biology. Instead, we are beyond that.

Our beauty is biologically driven; the need to occupy space, but it is not relative to culture. It is relative to the environment and the resources it provides! Both culture and Beauty can take input from the environment and resources, but there is no causation between them. This is a subtle but important difference. In a sense, there are two perpendicular axes intermixing. On one side, we have biology and culture, interlocked and self-propagating deterministically. On the other side, there is Beauty arising from biology and resources. This second axis is perpendicular to the first; it is pulling it away from continuing on a straight line. This is the whole point!

This is Part 1 of the Origins of Blue Pill mega article.
Introduction
Part two
Part three
Orientation