The Case for the Gen Z White Pill
The only hope of reversing the decline of the West is Gen Z, whether we like it or not.
In the online culture spaces that I inhabit- specifically the Christian, right wing, and Americana circles, I have observed a great deal of struggle over whether there is hope for the future, in the many specific discussions such a widespread and dense subject demands.
One such discussion is the relation between the generation gap and the cultural and political future of America. Though the discussion is weighty, and full of confusing political lingo (what are blue, red, black, and white pills?), we must first talk about the generation gap, and which generation, if any, are responsible for the current situation, before we can discuss the political speak I use throughout the article- and most importantly: Gen Z, and their relation to the current political moment in the West.
I: The Blunders of the Past
In any discussion revolving around the generation gap, one can expect a few things to happen. One of the most common occurrences is the village Boomer deciding that their opinion, which all have heard nigh a thousand times, must be heard. Everyone reading this knows exactly what I’m talking about.
The Boomer must make it known that the problem with the generations who came after them is that they’re soft, that they have “never had a hard day’s work in their lives,” that back in their day, the Boomers had to work for everything they got, and these young people nowadays don’t work hard- it must’ve been those darn participation trophies! The stupidity of such platitudes, repeated ad nauseam, can drive one to madness.
One of the most pervasive myths in Western culture is the idea that Boomers are the most conservative generation. This simply isn’t true. The Boomers are the generation of Woodstock. They are the generation that came up with the awful refrain of “don’t talk about politics or religion at the dinner table-” an idea that, perhaps more than any other from the 20th century, has led to the moral crises that plague us today. Everyone should talk about the things that matter most to them, and what it is that they want out of life. The Boomers’ inheritance from their forefathers was a healthy Christian culture, a dominant Hegemony, a wealthy but still homegrown economy, and a healthy distaste for world affairs and elitism- something as American as Apple Pie (If you don’t believe me, read George Washington’s farewell address). It has been centuries since a generation in the West inherited so much- particularly in America- and has left so little to those in their stead. Villains like BlackRock oft depicted in Right Wing media only exist because of many Boomers’ insistence that their inheritances- which any decent person in any other age would pledge to their family- be invested in the market or put toward “philanthropy.”
It should also be of note that a large number of those “blue-pilled” among us are Boomers. They are bought completely into modern American myths like a time when journalists were objective (never), a time when the universities were objective, scientific institutions in search of truth (pre 1900), and Ronald Reagan being the greatest president ever (he’s not. I like him, but amnesty turned California blue, and the idea that America should be the world police was justified because of a collapsing USSR- Reagan courted many war hawks in his administration). In other words, the Boomers were the generation least capable of critical thinking, and fall straight into predefined roles without any question. Tiresome stubbornness, an absence of caring for one’s history, and an inability to have any frame of reference for politics outside of the current moment is Boomerism typified.
I know that so far, I have been generalizing. Surely some will point out that not all Boomers are like this. I know. Some of my favorite people (all four of my wonderful, wise, loving grandparents) are boomers, who aren’t like the archetype I have laid out above. Nevertheless, pointing to exceptions only justifies the rule. You, the reader, know precisely what I’m talking about. Avoiding the reasons for our problems helps no one; the problems will certainly not go away. I am attempting a diagnosis of our problem. In order to continue the diagnosis (and hope to offer some kind of solution), I feel that I must also talk about what the Boomers in the Church did the past 50 or so years. Once I have fully diagnosed the genesis of the current moment, I can move on to my reason for hope in the future. I wrote this paragraph in the middle of the article to let you know that I know that I may come off as a bit harsh and brash, but I harbor no special ill will toward Boomers- and no one should. In Leviticus 19:32 the Lord says: “Stand up in the presence of the aged, show respect for the elderly and revere your God. I am the Lord.” My point is simply that we should examine the root cause of our problems. As a generation, Boomers certainly aren’t evil, just misguided. And perhaps a bit clumsy.
So hopefully we know by now that the state of Western culture in the present is largely due to Boomers. But it started with the abdication of responsibility by the Church in the past. The sentiment I mentioned before, “don’t talk about politics or religion at the dinner table,” did not enter the American mind without consequence. It first produced the problem of Biblical illiteracy in the Church. That problem led to the exit of a healthy Church in American society, which led to the rise of New Atheism. The New Atheists dubiously asserted that if only we could leave behind the shackles of that malignant and outdated concept called religion, we could let The Science (TM) lead us into a glorious future. Of course, this idea was ridiculous from the get-go. Every society that has ever graced the Earth has had a concept of Religion, of the sacred, of the supernatural. There is no avoiding questions of meaning, and tabling the questions until a later time (as if those questions could be up for debate) eats away at the bedrock of society. If a society cannot agree that some things are not up for discussion, then that society has no shared ideal. That society actually ceases to be a nation, because what makes up a nation is shared history, shared goals, shared values, and a shared concept of the sacred.
And so, a bad Church- the televangelist era most of all- led to New Atheism, which left a gaping hole in society where Religion (specifically Christianity) should go. Power hates a vacuum, and so the monstrous creation of the modern American religion- sometimes called “political correctness,” or “Wokeness,” or simply the re-emergence of “commies-” stepped into the void. Landen and I are not particularly fond of the above terms. If you noticed, the Left no longer uses the term “Woke,” which is not a great sign for the cultural lexicon- Lenin would not have rejected the label “Communist” because both the proponents and opponents of Communism in the 20th century used it; it was merely a descriptor instead of a pejorative. In the future, we will devote some time to studying the new Religion and see if we can find a better descriptor, but for now, we must move on.
II: The Confounding Present and The Ever-Present Truth
So far, I have used niche, modern internet political language to make my points. But because I feel that the larger point I am attempting to make should be understood by as many people as possible, I want to take a moment to explain what some of these words mean. If you are a veteran of niche, modern internet political language, you probably can skim through most of part II until you reach the bit about White and Black Pills.
The Red pill/Blue pill coupling has been circulating through our mainstream political discourse since around 2015 or so, but its roots come from an internet blog from the late 2000s: Unqualified Reservations, by Mencius Moldbug, a pseudonym for the now un-pseudonymous Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin takes the most well-known scene from The Matrix and uses it as a political analogy. The guide, Morpheus, offers the hero, Neo, a decision:
“You take the blue pill, the story ends; you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe.”
“You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
Yarvin’s original use of the term is not what mainstream political commentators call “red-pilled” and “blue-pilled.” Those people label every mildly right-wing influencer to be “red-pilled,” and every mildly left-wing opinion to be “blue-pilled.” I’m sorry, but Ben Shapiro saying “gender exists” in a video titled ‘Shapiro OWNS College LIBTARD on Gender! BASED and RED-PILLED’ or something along those lines is not what we are looking for. To be red-pilled is to acknowledge that information fed to you your whole life, both implicitly and explicitly- nay, information that no one has ever had a reason to question- may not actually be what is true. Remember what I said about Boomers being unable “to have any frame of reference for politics outside of the current moment?” But never mind little ol’ me, hear from Yarvin himself in The Case Against Democracy:
I grew up believing in democracy. I’ll bet you did too. I spent 20 years of my life in democratic schools. I’ll bet you did too.
Suppose you were a Catholic in 16th-century Spain. Imagine how hard it would be for you to stop believing in Catholicism.
You are a Catholic. Your parents were Catholics. You were educated by Catholics. You are governed by Catholics. All your friends are Catholics. All the books you’ve ever read were written by Catholics.
Sure, you’re aware that not everyone in the world is a Catholic. You’re also aware that this is the cause of all the violence, death and destruction in the world.
Look at what Protestants do when they get into power. They nail genitals to the city gates. They behead their own wives. Crazy stuff!And let’s not even start on the Turks…
Now suppose you’re you. But you have a time machine that lets you talk to this 16th-century Spanish Catholic version of you.
How do you convince this guy or gal that the answer to all the world’s problems is not “more Catholicism”? How do you say, um, dude, this Trinity thing—the virgin birth—transubstantiation… ya know…
So you see how hard it is to explain that democracy is bunk.
Although I’m still unconvinced that our problems today are Democracy itself, the proposition is worth thinking about- what if Democracy isn’t all we’ve made it out to be? But debating the merits of democracy is an aside. The point of the Red Pill is that the policy prescriptions already laid out for you in a mostly meaningless charade, supposed to represent “reasoned debate,” from the time you are 3 years old until you die, may not actually be what is true. You are awake to the fact that every piece of information you consume in the West is inherently biased toward Democracy, toward the Enlightenment, toward Scientism, toward being “Objective,” ultimately pointing toward the utopian possibility of total equality.
Here are a few Red Pills of my own: Maybe we’re not smarter than people who lived in the past. Maybe wisdom and knowledge aren’t the same thing. Maybe the religious rituals and forms of government used by people who lived before us actually existed for a reason, despite our sneering. Maybe our age will be looked down upon by people in the future for our widespread arrogance and narcissism. Maybe we can learn things despite a lack of credentials, or because we don’t like the person presenting us truthful, valuable information. Maybe the greatest Man who ever lived was God in a manger.
But as Yarvin says, “Take a few Red Pills, not the whole bottle.” Not everything you believe is fake, just some things.
So what the heck was I babbling about- Black Pills and White Pills? Well, just as the Blue Pill’s sleepy simulation world is paired with the Red Pill’s breaking free to the ‘real world,’ the Black Pill and White Pill are opposites paired together. After you have ingested a few Red Pills, you are clear-sighted enough to see that the West’s cultures and governments (in my case, America particularly) are not in a good place. The question that must arise is what to do about it. This is where the Black Pill and White Pill enter the scene.
The Black Pill is cynical and depressing: The West is over, we awoke too late to save our heritage, and now there is nothing left but to wait and see what happens. The battle is lost, the enemy has already broken down the city’s gates. The Black Pill is generally taken by those who may have ingested the whole bottle of Red Pills despite the manufacturer’s warning- Red Pill OD’s are unfortunately quite common on the right.
The White Pill is not the opposite of the Black Pill in the same way that the Red and Blue Pills are opposites. The White Pill acknowledges that chances may be slim, but that there is a chance. The White-pilled among us argue that the things we love about our country- our Christianity, our culture, our traditions, our values- are too valuable to simply allow them to sink below the waves. Not only this, but the White Pill also argues that there is real hope to be found from certain facts. One of my favorites is the refrain of political commentator Michael Malice: “The enemy class is not made up of impressive people.” In other words, the people in Washington DC, New York, and Los Angeles who run our country are not an insurmountable force. They are not Genghis Khan conquering the whole of the world. Sauron can be defeated.
Perhaps the greatest White Pills are delivered to those of us who follow the Lord; like a divine Walgreens home delivery service (a monstrous analogy, to be sure). Yes, we are sinful, fallen, awful beings. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it,” Jeremiah asks (Ch 17, verse 9). In a vacuum, that is a Black Pill. Solomon, in his great wisdom, sees this and correctly concludes “All is vanity.”
But our brokenness- even rebelliousness- is not the end of the story. As it was from the beginning, God had a plan. He told Eve, immediately following her and Adam’s first sins, that he would deliver them. God was already making things right. Reading through the entire Bible (for yourself, not taking someone else’s word for it) paints a clear picture: we screw up, God justly punishes us and mercifully gets right back to making things better again. God’s perfect justice and mercy come together in Jesus, who finally gives us a way- the Way- back to relationship with God.
And such is the Gospel. The Sermon on the Mount shows us many things, but among them how far short we are of being good enough for God. It is not enough to not murder, Jesus says, but “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire” (Matt. 5:22). Not only is it a sin to commit adultery, but “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). No one is good enough: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48). But through him, you can be saved. As all familiar with the Gospel already know, this is how the story goes.
But I also described the Gospel as a White Pill- surely you can guess what I mean? The existence of not only our sins but dark forces who wish our destruction mean that life with Christ is not easy- the White Pill is not an airbrush. But look to Jesus: his life was not easy: betrayal by his family, his hometown, his nation, even his disciples, for the costly weight of the Truth that he brought to us. The governing authorities killed Christ, but he already told us what would happen in John 15:18-20:
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.”
Again, the Gospel is not easy (contrary to what Joel Osteen may have told you). Our own errors and misdeeds, and the dark forces afoot, wishing to catch us in a snare as a spite against the One who they hate, are on the prowl. Not only is evil probable, it was guaranteed: “I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God. And they will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me” (John 16:1-3). And despite this we can have peace: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). All the machinations of evil that we see politically, all the misdeeds that make your heart cry out for justice, all the daily discouragements and pessimism and lamentations mean nothing at the end of the day. God is always on His throne, he is the one who sits in the heavens and laughs and does whatever he pleases. And He will make all things new. There is no greater White Pill than that.
III: The Hope for the Future
Hopefully I have now corrected your vision to see the big picture. Despite whatever conclusion you may come to about the political world after some thoughts I hope this article will provoke, Christians always have reason for hope. If you aren’t a Christian, it’s time for you to close the article, save your spot, and begin a deep-dive into your metaphysical beliefs. There is no point in me sharing an alliance with you if you can’t understand the most basically true things about humanity- what is the point of observing politics if you don’t understand the creatures participating in them?
Let’s summarize where we are:
The State of the West is in decline, for all of the reasons I mentioned in part 1: Boomers, the illiterate Church, the power vacuum, and the new and ineptly named “Woke” religion that now reigns supreme.
The State of the West, though materially discouraging, is not of ultimate importance. God is on his throne.
So…
What the heck do transcendent metaphysical truths and the fall of the West have to do with Gen Z?
I’m glad you asked. It seems to me that we have reached a certain point in the history of America, a point past some former “points of no return” but before others. What I mean by that is that some things we are never getting back- we must be able to acknowledge losses we have taken in order to be able to build success off of them. Again, we mustn’t avoid our problems because that won’t make the problems go away.
The thing we are never getting back is a unified America, true to the Constitution, focused on small government, from sea to shining sea. The spirit of 1776 will not commence, as much as all the influencers and buffalo guys shout it loudly and proudly. The reason I say this is because the Pandemic proved that what most people want is not freedom- even in America. It is a sad reality; the fulfillment of John Adams’ and Benjamin Franklin’s prophecy that ‘those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither and will lose both.’ Similarly, H.L. Mencken (a 20th century journalist and satirist who commented on culture) correctly predicted in the 20th century that “most people want security in this world, not freedom.” Such sentiments were proven verifiably correct in the last 2-3 years.
Of course, not everyone championed the pandemic response. Many noticed the inconsistencies in rules about masking and social distancing. Many noticed the ridiculousness surrounding schools, and the power plays made by teacher’s unions to keep schools closed- despite all evidence pointing toward the fact that only those who were elderly or had serious comorbidities were in any real danger from the virus. And many are waking up late to the fact that the vaccines (which aren’t vaccines at all) were not only useless for preventing the spread of the virus but in fact dangerous all on their own. The unvaccinated were not the ones who experienced a severe winter of illness and death.
(If you’d like to read more, I have a fairly random collection of sources relating to the Pandemic, COVID mortality, and vaccine info here. It’s not comprehensive in any way, but I remembered certain things and didn’t want to lose them after the next news cycle.)
The Pandemic was, in the truest sense, the mass red-pilling of many, many people. Why did Democrats and Republicans, who had spent the last 5 years calling each other Nazis and Commies, immediately all agree about “public health” and welfare checks and spent equal time chiding “conspiracy theorists” who noticed inconsistencies in the mainstream narratives? People realized that they were lied to, and that the supposed “sides” in power actually agree about almost everything. These sides are in truth a Uniparty with the same goals, acting out roles in a game. Democrats are the Harlem Globetrotters and Republicans are the Washington Generals. Observations like that led many people to re-examine their politics. I am one of those people.
So there is still some hope for America; there are some bridges not yet crossed. Some people do want freedom, and some people don’t know what they want, but that what they want isn’t what we have now. We can get back a moral, Christian society with American culture and values. But the key to this rebirth is Gen Z.
Let’s evaluate all the generations alive today. There are hardly any of the Silent Generation (born 1928-44) left. I have already discussed the Boomers (‘46-64). Gen X (‘65-80) did the best they could for being raised by Boomers, and are generally the most chill- hence the longing for the relative harmony of the 90s, when Gen X were young adults and therefore driving culture. But “chill” is only a helpful quality for generations that live in peaceful times; Gen X cannot save the country on their own. Millennials (‘81-96) were captured by that perfected Wilsonian machine, the modern University (a credentialist institution, not an objective one), and have mostly been acknowledged as the worst generation out of the main four (Boomers-X-Millennials-Z), primarily for their sense of entitlement. This can be debated, but hopefully we all know by now that looking at whole swaths of people necessitates generalizing.
The times following millennials have been an abject disaster: the fall-off in music, the decline of church attendance, the rise in people identifying as sexual minorities, New Atheism (and its offspring, Reddit Atheism), and the skyrocketing use of the word ‘racism;’ culminating in political creatures such as 2012-onwards Barack Obama (different from 2008 Obama), Bernie Sanders, and AOC- and don’t forget some of the intellectuals driving the new Religion: Ibram X Kendi, Robin DiAngelo, and Eastern Washington’s own Rachel Dolezal (ugh, pour one out for the EW homies). Our society sucks, and everyone knows it, or at least can feel it.
Gen Z (1997-2012-ish) has lived through all of this. That is not even to mention that they have lived through multiple market bubbles and a pandemic while in their formative years- meaning that Zoomers will have the toughest luck owning their own homes. Social Security will be pretty much gone by the time I’m 35. Aside from economic struggle, Gen Z have also lived in a culture without Christianity as a dominant religion. They have lived their whole lives in a secular society, and it isn’t attractive.
From here, there are two places that the Zoomers go: copy the Millennials, and swing for socialism (or at least double-down on Enlightenment Liberalism); or a yearning for something more- and with the second kind of people does the key lie.
I once remarked to a friend that our generation is half full of braindead tech addicts and half full of driven, brilliant people- the best people I’ve ever met. I still think it’s true. Gen Z is hungry for something else, anything but what we’ve got right now. This is both a great opportunity and a serious danger. Why? Because it drives people running towards anything that will defeat the irrational, authoritarian, modern, secular, progressive monster.
What I’m trying to say is that a victory for right wing politics means literally nothing to me if it is driven by neopagans, or atheists, or vengeful malcontents. The only way we get this country back is through a Christian revival. Whether it be through a re-run of a tweaked democracy, a monarchy, localism, or something else; I don’t really care: the morality of the people in the system are much more important than the system itself. The real evils predicted by great dystopian fiction have very little things in common: 1984’s brunt power and total state control, Brave New World’s scientific dystopia disguised as utopia, and That Hideous Strength’s “Materialist-Magician” spiritual villains. They seem to be different, even contradictory predictions, but all are the triumph of systems over people. That Hideous Strength in particular points to the fact that all political conflict is spiritual- and carries with it the implication that mature Christians should engage in the political realm. The “Spirit of the Age” has two basic tactics: In times where the Church is healthy, to subvert the Church; and in times where the Church is not healthy, to oppress the Church. We are in the second time, and the dark forces prowling about are building monstrous machines to crush the Church- or at least press it, because evil cannot ever truly win.
The kind of evil that is being implemented in our time is an exact inversion of what God wants for us. More than anything else, we were created to be God’s Imagers on Earth, a task that cannot be accomplished without being in personal relationship with God. This doesn’t mean we don’t love our family, our community, our nation, but those are poison if our first love is not God. If our first love is God, all of the other loves- which spring from him in the first place- can be put in right order.
“No amount of activity in the King's service will make up for neglect of the King Himself.”
-Robert Murray M'Cheyn
Gen Z can save the West because they hunger and thirst for something more. I say let them hunger and thirst for righteousness. We need less of Tim Keller and Phil Vischer, and more of GK Chesterton and CS Lewis. We need less of Lecrae and more of Handel. We need less inter-Christian squabbling and more focus on our mission while on Earth. We need less “judging is bad” and more calling out wolves who devour the flock. We need less Conservative vs Liberal culture war and more Church vs Satan culture war. We need less fluffy self-help books and more time in the actual Bible. We need less “I follow Paul” or “I follow Apollos,” and more “I follow Christ.”
The advantage Gen Z has is not that they are particularly gifted, or that young people have got something extra special about them, but that have seen an objectively bad culture, and want to fix it, so they come to care more about questions of meaning and mankind (if they are brave, open-minded, and smart enough- the alternative is drowning oneself with noise, which about half of Gen Z does). The rebirth of philosophy is happening in no small part due to young people digging into thinkers and artists like Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Soren Kierkegaard, Ratzinger, Aquinas, Calvin, Thomas Carlyle, Luther, Augustine, Lovecraft, and Chesterton, and even Plato and Aristotle themselves. Some present danger, some are impossibly near to the truth while still being just not quite there, and some present solid Christianity. The thing they have in common is that they have things to say about us: some of our hopes and fears, some truths about human nature, some observations about their past and present, and some prophecies of the future that ring eerily true today. In all cases, they offer some kind of wisdom or answer to the pure apathy of the present age.
The point I have been driving toward all along in this article is that Gen Z is the best hope for the West because they are the last hope. Yes, they need to be led by virtuous individuals, most of whom aren’t Gen Z, but they possess the capability for change because they are the first generation raised in American Secularism and a good bit of them don’t like it. The revival of the West will happen because of young Christian men, or it won’t happen at all.
And Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite answered and said:
“I am young in years,
and you are aged;
therefore I was timid and afraid
to declare my opinion to you.
I said, ‘Let days speak,
and many years teach wisdom.’
But it is the spirit in man,
the breath of the Almighty, that makes him understand.
It is not the old who are wise,
nor the aged who understand what is right.”
Job 32:6-9