When I wrote the blue and red pill theoretical framework the goal was to identify the mutual exclusivity of the two frameworks. I deliberately left out the purple pill, as it requires its own essay due to the fact that it appears to contradict the mutual exclusivity that was outlined in the other essay. To define the purple pill, it is a position that seeks to enable a man to have the blue pill fantasy, while remaining red pill. In essence leveraging his red pill knowledge in order to experience the blue pill fantasy.

In a sense, once a man learns red pill knowledge, it is impossible to return to the Matrix without significant dissonance, unlike Cypher, there is simply no way to have your mind wiped clean of all aspects of the red pill. It may be suppressed for a time, or channeled through a defense mechanism or two, but the idealism that is required for a true blue pill fantasy is gone and what remains is merely a hollow shell.

Central to the blue pill fantasy is the idea of there being a “one“, a perfect partner who fulfills your every need. Leaving out the part where perfection is a human conception that has no place in reality, and if it did would at best exist in a moment by moment basis, there is no such thing as a perfect partner. Someone may be a better fit for you than another, in transient moments it may feel as they are perfect but this is an illusion. A man cannot at the same time accept AWALT and view his partner in the manner required for the blue pill.

From my research on the topic, the reasoning behind a purple pill perspective is to attempt a circumnavigation of the principles that are core to the red pill, such s solipsism, hypergamy and “all women are like that“. It is also based in an illusion of control, through which if the husband is red pill enough, he can alter her biological firmware, through constant vigilance. Throughout history, female nature was socially controlled through various means, religion, social shaming and jurisprudence are some of them. For instance, British divorce law from pre-1900 where the husband would automatically gain custody over the children in the event of divorce played on a female being attached to her children to reduce branch swinging, and to police her behavior.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter“, demonstrates how social shaming and shunning could be utilized to reduce the tendency for hypergamy, through it having social and financial consequences. The severe biblical punishments for adultery served to further reduce the inherent tendencies of the human female.

The purple pill perspective is therefore, that a man standing alone as long as he is alpha and red pill aware enough can be different from the myriad of other men who were unable to accomplish what an entire society creates incentives against. To make this essay comparable with the other essay, I will go through the purple pill perspective on each point from it.

Be Your Best Self So You Can Just Be Yourself

The Red Pill position is that all men should strive to be their best selves and the blue pill position that men should just be themselves. As with most of these positions, the purple pill positions itself somewhere between these two points, usually with the position that a man should strive to make himself as alpha as possible, in order to facilitate an aspect of being able to be himself. In essence a man with a sexual market value that is high enough, can indulge in some blue pill behaviors without the risk of triggering his partners hypergamic tendencies.

On the topic of “Just be yourself” it is in embryo merely a carte blanche to engage in behavior that feels good in the moment. This is no different than “it’s fits my macros” when it comes to dieting or “I did legs last week, better use leg day for more upper body work this week” for weight lifting.

Just be yourself is in many ways also a filtering strategy for women, it makes it easier for them to separate alpha fucks from beta bucks, as an alpha just being himself is being an alpha, and the same for a beta. While long-term relationships inevitably means that an alpha becomes more beta, the purple pill approach is to balance alpha characteristics with being his natural self, thus striking a balance that gives the women the “best of both worlds“, doting beta and dread game dropping alpha. In this sense, the concept is similar to the female fantasy of taming the alpha.

This is reminiscent of the old school pick up artists, who rather than seek to become high value men, would become really good at appearing as high value men. With somewhat disastrous results. It will also create issues as your frame will be non-congruent, as it requires a degree of self-control and conscious presence that is non-sustainable over a long period of time.

Abundance mindset and outcome independence is based on the ability to walk away, which again is based in sexual abundance and opportunity, by giving one person sexual monopoly over you, under pain of divorce court this is eradicated. Thus, one is in a position where the woman holds all the cards, from a legal and social perspective, and one must overcome this purely from one’s own strong frame.

Men and Women are Different and Once You Know, You Can Handle That

This mirrors the red pill to quite a large degree, while the blue pill fantasy is fixed on the egalitarian blank slate proposition, accepting that men and women are different is one of the cardinal red pill principles. However, the assumption that this gives control is flawed. One can liken this to tight-rope walking over a chasm, you can control your own body and thoughts, but you cannot control if nature decides that a gust of wind should throw you to your death.

The position reminds me of the tragedy of Long Term Capital Management, a hedge fund with multiple Nobel prize winning academic quantitative economists that failed miserably because of issues pointed out by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his books “The Black Swan” and “Fooled by Randomness” preceding the 2008 financial crisis, namely that inestimable events happen far more frequently than models of reality would estimate.

The fact that one knows which variables exist, does not mean that one can control or predict their effects or their inter-dependencies. Being red pill aware, and thus knowing of hypergamy, solipsism and so on, does not translate into control over their effects, merely a perception of such control. Perhaps it may serve to reduce the risk of failure somewhat, but considering that it does not reduce the impact of the risk, merely the probability, it still remains significant.

In fact, the perception of control and risk management may in and of itself lead to higher risk exposure as a result of underestimating the risk of the event in question. You have little control over what happens the day your submissive, traditional, red pill wife gets a new alpha boss, or when she gets inspired watching “Eat, Pray, Love” and “Wild” with her girlfriends.

A Relationship Is Not Easy But Can Be Managed

The former section outlines the idea that awareness of troubled waters assists in navigating them. The idea that relationships are not easy come from the fact that every relationship will have issues, and once one moves beyond the “just having fun together” stage of those issues multiply rapidly. One of the most fundamental management quotes is “What gets measured gets managed” by management guru Peter Drucker.

For instance, by creating a rule that you only send her one text for each three she sends you, only call her once for every 2 times she calls you and so on, this helps you manage your own issues with contact. Many men have a tendency to over-contact women they are interested in, thus creating a metric for it makes it manageable.

However, creating such metrics for something as complex as a relationship, draws attention away from directly investing in maintaining and building your sexual market value. In my upcoming book on Gendernomics I speak on altered time investment patterns within a relationship, where the female expects the man to alter his investment structure from favoring his sexual market value to favoring their relationship. However, these are not mutually exclusive, because a man who lets go of his sexual market value, will inevitably be discarded for another male. The investment made in management in this case, is an investment in the relationship, which the female will resent as it results in her being held accountable, and will draw away from investments in the man’s sexual market value.

In addition, as the man is directing his attention towards the female to ensure that her metrics are within the acceptable range, he may fall into the trap of becoming reactive, rather than pro-active. There is an option to act pro-actively, however it would require a constant state of calibration to balance the alpha frame with beta behaviors.

Multiple Right Partners Exists (Similar to the Blue Pill)

The red pill position is that there is no “right partner” for anyone, the blue pill position takes the position that the soul-mate myth is reality, finally the purple pill position is a rejection of the unicorn, but an acceptance of the proposition that there is such a thing as a “right” partner. Usually this “right partner” is a submissive, fairly young and to some extent sheltered woman, who rejects feminism, equality, is red pill aware and wants a traditional relationship.

Of course, once this became somewhat common knowledge within the sphere, the manosphere version of “gamer girls” showed up. A woman’s past is the best guide to her future, so she should be properly vetted, but as a wise man once said, “Any girl who is great in the sack, is only great because another guy took the time to train her properly“.

Picking a woman with a good history, young, with the right personality and character traits is a good risk-reduction strategy, but does not limit risk. I’ve been very entertained by the men who go off to Asia or Eastern Europe, find themselves a young, traditional women, who is then rapidly corrupted the second she spends time with American women.

The End-State is a Monogamous Relationship with Children and a Job

This is one of the shared views between the blue pill and the purple pill. From my perspective, this is a flawed view, however, I also think that the end-state a man desires for himself, is his choice and his decision as long as he has educated himself on alternative options. The trouble with blue pill men is that they cannot see beyond their social programming and thus fail to see alternate avenues of accomplishment, a purple pill man so far as he has explored his options is perfectly qualified to make such a decision.

It is What You Can Do For Yourself and Others

As with many other issues, the purple pill perspective walks a knife-edge with some of the underlying principles. The Red pill is based around looking out for number 1, while the blue pill is sacrificing oneself for the benefit of others. While the red pill perhaps leans towards narcissism and ego-centrism, the blue pill is firmly rooted in codependency and supplication. The purple pill seeks to strike a balance between self and other that seeks synthesis between the two opposites.

One cannot be both at the same time and thus this play has to be based on average behaviors over time. One cannot be a narcissistic supplicant, these two are opposites, it is as if one were to try to both consume and invest the same $100, it is impossible. While this is perhaps a task for the Kantian dialectic of thesis, antithesis and synthesis to reconcile, from an empiricist perspective they represent opposites. One could argue a yin and yang perspective where one shifts from one behavior style to another, self-indulgence and then self-sacrifice, however it is inevitable that one wolf will become stronger than the other.

Summary and Conclusions

It is easy to assume from this post, and the previous one that I’m fundamentally against long-term relationships in general and marriage in particular. However, I do not view either as impossible or unsound. There are countless examples of men within the manosphere that are married and who have functioning relationships. I’ve also grown up observing marriages that last as long as 70 years. However, as the western world has rejected more and more of the traditional methods that assisted in keeping a marriage together, and in fact has adopted incentives for letting the relationship collapse, it must be approached as a high risk proposition.

What is rarely talked about is that a lack of control is not the most dangerous, an illusion of control is. If one is aware that one has no control, it is likely that risk management is employed to reduce probability of threats and lessen their impact. If one thinks that the threats are under control, then it is likely that risk management will be neglected.

The goal of writing this post was that the purple pill seems to be growing in influence, and for many men who are recovering blue pill men but who have not reached the acceptance phase, the purple pill perspective represents a red herring. From the Dunning-Kruger effect, we learn that people are prone to over-estimating their own competence when their competence is low, and thus the purple pill becomes dangerous territory. Thus, a recovering blue pill man who views himself as a red pill alpha, may assume that he can handle a relationship, only to find himself reverted to the blue pill frame that lead him to the red pill in the first place.

In some ways the purple pill represents what Blackdragon refers to as the “Alpha male 1.0” [1], an attempt by an alpha male to live the blue pill fantasy and having the best of both worlds. While this is possible in some cases, one must be aware of the statistical probability of failure and plan accordingly. The fallout of a failed long-term relationship can be very severe in terms of financial, physical, sexual market value and psychological effects, thus, a man must be prepared for this.

Some things to do would be not bringing the state into it through having a private marriage ceremony and a private marriage contract between the two parties, think through the consequences of failure, such as child custody, child support, assets, liabilities, and the range of other issues. Cover these in a contract prior to the onset of the arrangement. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and facing down such a woman who can weaponize the state apparatus to act on her behalf during a high conflict divorce is no good experience. [2]

A note:

I recently launched a Patreon page where I will be posting additional content every month for those who support me and I will do a Google Hangout for the highest tier Patrons (limited to 10 people).

I’ve also had some requests for consults, which I’ve declined up until now, but due to demand I’ve chosen to open up for doing some consults on request. For details please check out my Consulting and Patreon Page

As always you can buy my book Gendernomics at Amazon.com as both paperback and Kindle

More Reading

“Incerto“ by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Sources:

[1] http://www.blackdragonblog.com/glossary/

[2] “Splitting: Protecting Yourself While Divorcing Someone with Borderline or Narcissistic Personality Disorder” by Bill Eddy