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I do not believe that intellectual arguments generally have much impact on Marxists. As a notable case in point, Thomas Sowell (perhaps the most insightful political thinker of the late 20th century) was a Marxist when he began studying for his Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago. He did his dissertation under George Stigler and studied extensively with Milton Freidman, both of whom were Nobel laureates in economics and vigorous free market advocates. If intellectual arguments, well-formed and directed at a capable, open mind, are the cure for Marxism, Sowell should have been the poster child for the red pill by the time he graduated. In fact, however, Sowell was still a Marxist when he received his doctorate.
After spending years under the rigorous tutelage of some of the world's foremost free marked economists without a dent in his Marxist zeal, Sowell began working as an intern for the US Department of Laor. Within three months he had renounced Marxism -- not as a result of any intellectual argument, but as a result of seeing how the sausage of leftist government is made. Sowell went on to write A Conflict of Visions, which I believe was largely inspired by his own red pill experience. The thesis of the book is that ideological differences are not born of errors in reasoning on one side or the other, but of different ways of seeing the world. These ways of seeing, AKA worldviews (or visions as Sowell calls them) are not the result of conscious deliberation or argumentation. On the contrary, they are the stage on which deliberation and argumentation take place. Sowell holds that people with different worldviews talk past each other because they literally see different worlds and speak different languages, even when they look at the same events and use the same words. I believe he is quite correct.
As a rule, people do not argue themselves into a worldview and they do not get argued out of a worldview. What changes one's worldview, in general as in Sowell's case, is not argument but experience. Fortunately, the experience that shapes one's worldview does not have to be a lived out in the flesh. As Jordan Peterson has recently advocated in his We Who Wrestle With God lecture tour, the virtual experience induced by hearing a story can also shape one's worldview. That is why people of all times and cultures spend so much time telling and listening to stories (and watching screen plays on television, reading novels, etc.). Peterson says, "A story is the lens through which we see the world". I would say that a worldview is the lens through which we see the world, and stories are a crucial device by which worldviews are promulgated and passed down.
In particular, values of a culture are transmitted through stories of heroes and villains who live out the virtues and vices of that culture. This is why the vast majority of material in sacred texts consists of stories. Of the roughly 23,000 verses in the Hebrew Bible, only 613 are commandments and the rest is storytelling. The works of Homer and Hesiod -- the principal religious texts of classical Greece -- were nothing but stories of heroes and villains, and this is not uncommon for sacred texts around the world. I hypothesize that peoples' natural capacities for spiritual experience , for hypnotic trance, and for the appreciation of music, co-evolved as a mechanism for passing down the worldviews of a culture. Language evolved for passing down declarative knowledge, and entranced storytelling evolved as a mechanism for imparting the shared cultural worldviews in which that declarative knowledge is situated. Want to change someone's values? Entrance them and tell them a story. That is how Milton Erickson did it; that's how Gerry Spence does it, and that is how Jesus did it. Great influencers are great hypnotists and great storytellers. This is why religious sermons are given by a well lit speaker against a dark background, begin and end with music, and consist mostly of stories. TV Shows and movies are conducted that way, too. This is why children's bedtime stories are a tradition in every culture: sleepy children are entranced.
I would guess more people have broken free of Marxist brainwashing by reading Orwell's Animal Farm than by reading Hayek's Road to Serfdom or Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (I've heard of both anecdotally, but more of the former). But the story that is truly the bane of Marxism is the Holy Bible. Marxists know their enemies, and that is why they make war on that book everywhere, and to whatever extent, they take the stage. We saw that, for example, in the opening ceremony of the recent Summer Olympics. Evangelical Christians lean Republican by two to one [source], while atheists lean Democrat by four to one [source]. Women ages 18-29 lean Democrat by only two to one [source]. About the only salient group that leans left harder than atheists are gays. So unless you think you can turn a gay person straight, the most effective red pill transformation you can make is to convert an atheist into an Evangelical Christian. Turning an atheist into a Christian is a stronger blow against Marxism than turning a young woman into an old man (and who would want to do that anyway?). Peter Boghossian, author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, recently lamented that perhaps by creating atheists he is also creating Marxist zealots. Of course he is, and even new atheist Richard Dawkins now tends to agree with that assessment [source].
Moreover, I believe we think of "taking the red pill" the wrong way. At this point, many if not most people -- even most Democrats -- already know that wokeness is intellectually preposterous and morally toxic, but they are scared to say so publicly. That means that the younger generation only hears one side of the story and the infamous march through the institutions ploughs ahead. What is chiefly needed to fight Marxism is not more arguments, or even more people to agree with us, but greater courage among those who already believe: the willingness to actually fight the culture war. The culture war is not a literal war, but is a literal fight in the sense that if you participate you may well suffer materially for it. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "It is not syllogisms that keep reluctant nerves and muscles at their post in the tenth hour of a bombardment." Whatever it is that keeps them there, that is what we need more of, and it doesn't come from arguments. It doesn't even come from the side of the brain that formulates and evaluates arguments.
So, want to red pill a normie? Don't argue with them; tell them stories heroes who embody the virtues honored by patriots of the West -- especially courage and integrity. Read them George Washington's first inaugural address, or his letter from Valley Forge. Or read them Sam Adam's speech to the Philadelphia State House, or Socrates's Apologia. But if you want to fire-engine-red pill a normie, share the Gospel with them. Christian communists might be a thing, but they aren't really much of a thing.
My 7 year old son asked me this morning, "Do monsters draw people with big sharp teeth?" It's a natural assumption; children (and cartoonists) often draw monsters with either exaggeratedly big sharp teeth, or claws, or horns (or all three) -- presumably because the fangs of an apex predators are primally frightening to people, especially to children. I said, "No, monsters draw people holding Bibles".
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