The Red Pill Hallucinogen
For myself, I view Red Pill theories the same way I view Critical Theories like critical race theory or intersectional feminism. They are theories piled on theories piled on theories, and have little to no applicability in real life. People believe in them because they want to, because no matter how inaccurate and disprovable they are, they provide them with some sort of template for interpreting society.
The issue for us, though, is that all of these theories, Red Pill ideas included, are the product of a society, a culture, and a mentality that is not Islamic. We are not talking about objective science here, it is, at best, soft science or philosophy — which means it is informed heavily by kufr. Adopting concepts so conceived will only lead to problems for us. This is an area — men and women and their relationships — in which Islam is perfectly sufficient to guide us.
The West is and always has been profoundly confused about human nature, about gender relations, about race, about rights, about pretty much every aspect of life as a human being. Every theory they have developed to resolve this confusion has just made matters worse; and it is no wonder, since the theories were developed in a state of confusion. It’s not really useful, or appropriate, for us to look for guidance in any of this.
It is easy to get caught up in a theory that simplifies matters in a quasi-authoritative way — particularly when it simplifies for us a matter that otherwise seems quite complex and important, like the relations between men and women. But, when you simplify anything complex, you inevitably get it wrong, and the errors tend to be fairly easy to point out — as long as you have not invested yourself too deeply into the theory to see it.
A lot of Red Pill theory is grounded in the theory of evolution; that humans are just at the top of the mammalian food chain, so the behavior of animals is seen as informative for how humans behave. This is how such and such species selects a mate, and people are the same, etc. But we know this isn’t the case. Humans are Bani Adam, we have a unique origin, a unique development, a unique nature, a unique function in the world; and our relationships reflect this; and Islam — the Qur’an and Sunnah provide us with all the information we need about ourselves, about each other, and about our relationships. There will likely be some overlap between the truth as Islam explains it, and Red Pill theories; but there will also be some overlap with Feminism, capitalism, Jungian psychology, and all sorts of other attempts in the West to interpret reality — even a broken clock is right twice a day. But we shouldn’t go to what may be accidentally right sometimes instead of to what is always right; and that’s Islam.
