Take the White Pill

And stop demoralising each other

This year I resolved to unplug from the media machine that serves up endless reasons to despair about the world and spend more time consuming beautiful and enjoyable things. 

The reason for this realisation that the media – even the kind I generally agree with - is unhealthy and as such consumption should (like sugar) be limited - came after I learned the Chinese version of TikTok. Unlike our youth, who are served up an endless stream of frivolity at best and blue-haired non-binaries complaining about being misgendered at worst, they are shown videos of their compatriots’ mastery. From tiny tots playing Chopin to elite athletes performing incredible feats of daring. Everything they see is aspirational. Everything our youth sees is demoralising. 

After hearing about this I started to see the seeds of the same effect in even mainstream conservative commentary. 

After some time browsing some of my favorite online news sites, I couldn’t help but think that the commentary would make anyone despair at the world. It tells the reader that standing up against Wokeness will make them persona non-grata, mobbed and cancelled forever, that we are heading for an energy apocalypse and no one with any power knows what do about it or has the stomach to do it, or that their child is being encouraged by activist teachers to transition to the opposite gender without their knowledge or consent.

This is nihilistic stuff (even if true) that makes one think that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and there isn’t a thing they can do about it. 

We can’t blame the CCP for this (like in the case of TikTok) we do this to ourselves. It us conservatives that write these opeds for other conservatives to consume. The despair at the world has become contagious amongst conservatives and has led to our media outlets being places where pessimists gather. 

Media outlets traditionally considered ‘leftwing’ are not like this. I was struck at a Guardian poll that said that 40% of their readers thought that the world would get better in 2023. I doubt you could find 40% of The Spectator readers that would be so optimistic. And I would be among those respondents that think that 2023 will be worse. 

But the issue is not that we recognise the problems - there are problems – that’s just a fact – the problem is the belief that things getting worse is a fait accompli. 

These were the thoughts that I had swimming around in my head before I picked up Michael Malice’s new book The White Pill: A Tale of Good and Evil and my gosh it clarified my thinking. 

What is the White Pill?

The idea of the “White Pill” came out of internet culture. 

Amongst the very online there has been a matrix metaphor is use for a very long-time. The most common expression is the “Red Pill” which coined by Rollo Tomassi and originally used by those that are now grouped as “the Manosphere” to describe what they consider hard truths about relations between the sexes (this is very much debatable, but a topic for another time). However, this expression was adopted by many online groups to describe a coming to an uncomfortable truth, including those that moved political positions from being “lefties” to conservatives. 

The opposite – as claimed by each group that calls itself “Red Pilled” is the group living in blissful ignorance or taking the “Blue Pill”. 

Once people know “the truth” there are two ways to respond to this. They can take the “Black Pill” and become nihilistic about the state of the world and the ability of things to improve (which many of the very online right are) or there are those that take the “White Pill” and think that truth and goodness (or whatever their concept of that is) must prevail in the end. 

In short, those that take describe themselves as “White Pilled” think there is a lot wrong with the world, but that things can and must get better. They are optimistic that – even if things become worse at first – in the end good will win out.

Now you, dear reader, may be asking, how, with all that is going wrong, could I possibly take the White Pill? The answer, with some perspective, optimism, and appreciation. 

Get Some Perspective 

Malice uses an exploration of the horrors that occurred in the Soviet Union and its subsequent collapse to demonstrate how horrible the world can be and also how quickly it can all change. 

Compared to the harrowing stories he tells of the horrors that occurred behind the iron curtain our present problems seem so insignificant. 

The nameless millions that starved to death in Ukraine and were “disappeared” off to the gulags because their housemate turned them in to get some more space, to the people whose names have made their ways to us through history (amazingly) like Kosior who endured the immense torture and refused to break until “the interrogators brought in Kosior’s sixteen-year-old daughter Tamara, and raped her in front of him”. 

The continuous (and senseless) executions, torture, cruelty towards people that were heroes one minute and one the wrong side of Stalin the next makes for dark reading (if you don’t become desensitised to it like I did abouthalf way through). 

Crucially, this all happened in relatively recent history, and as any one that has travelled in Eastern Europe (as I have done) knows how quickly these countries have become flourishing democracies which preserve much of what is good about Europe and western civilisation – and in some cases far better than the countries in Western Europe. 

There are two very important histories that are told in this book. 

The first is the atrocities that I have already mentioned, some of which this book provide the first mainstream document of (and quite frankly even I am inclined to give this book a trigger warning given the horrors that are described). The descriptions of what occurred in formally civilised countries as communism was imposed on them from the top down are harrowing. The fact that this whole sale oppression occurred in the middle of the last century - when Australians were enjoying largely the same legal rights as they do today (arguably in the case of things like freedom of speech – even more rights) – is an important reminder that things really could be much much worse. 

I am sure being told that “hey, at least you aren’t in the gulag” is little solace for those in deep despair about the state of the world, but the second part of the history, as chronicled by Malice shows us why taking the White Pill is not the same as taking the “Blue Pill”. 

The Glass is Half Full

The White Pill, unlike the Blue Pill, is no pipe dream or fantasy there are countless examples of heroes that come at a time when the world is looking bleak – think Churchill – and change the trajectory of history so we should be optimistic. For Malice, Margret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev (in particular) are the heroes that sent the Soviet Union into a very quick collapse – along with the Berlin Wall that symbolised a Europe divided by those that lived in free countries and those that didn’t. 

The White Pill shows us that life for people in Soviet Union was much worse than what we experience. The problems they had were far greater. And yet many of the readers will remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and have visited the now vibrant countries that used to be closed off behind it. For the people in these countries’ life has gone from dire to comfortable. 

The rise and fall of the Soviet Union is proof that the progressive version of history (as popularised today by Steven Pinker and Francis Fukuyama) that things are always getting better is plain wrong, but so are the nihilists that say that things will only get worse. 

In other words, the White Pill view is the most factual as it says that things can get both dramatically worse AND drastically better. 

What is most important is that WE don’t believe that everything is doomed, if we do, then the downward trajectory will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we continue to take the Black Pill and get our dommerism confirmed by the media we consume we will demoralise ourselves out of taking action. 

This leads me to the final take away – gratitude.

Appreciate the Good

It was the English philosopher Michael Oakeshott that describe the conservative temperament as not a longing for the past but an appreciation of what of ones’ inheritance is worth preserving. It is a gratitude for what is good about the present motivates the conservative in Oakeshott’s view. 

There is plenty for us to be grateful for (despite the problems of the world). We still live in free and prosperous countries (relative to what others in history have experienced) and if we just stopped had gratitude for the good fortune that we live in a still great country like Australia. Seriously, look around you right now… now continue reading… there is so much beauty and inspiration to be found. 

It is strange that at present it is the conservative side of the aisle that is so despondent. 

Oakeshott characterised the rationalist (though perhaps today we would say ‘progressive’) temperament by this trait, that looks around and only sees the things that are horrible and need improving. And there is still a lot of that in today’s progressives but still – if the content in various publications are anything to go by – they are a lot more upbeat about the state of the world than us conservatives. 

We need to find the good again and praise it! If you really want to change the direction of travel, then it is not enough to say all the things that are bad and getting worse but also appreciate the good – the things that you want to preserve and further. You need a positive vision of the world. Reagan and Thatcher didn’t just describe the problems of the Soviet Union but also extolled the virtues of what America and the UK had to offer.

If nothing else, finding the beauty in life and proclaiming it publicly in the pages of publications will make conservatives far more positive and motivated. The inverse of being demoralised. More importantly, others are more likely to join the team that is certain that it will be victorious and we all know from our personal lives that happy, positive people and groups are way more fun to be around.  

If the world is going to get better it will be because conservatives refocus on creating more beauty and good in the world until it grows into a vision so grand that the majority will want to join, not just complaining about the problems. 

So please dear conservatives, I urge you to take the White Pill, it will be good for you and may even lead to a positive change in the world.