atop the list of reasons for refusing the red
pill sits the following cluster of fears:
<...>
the fear of losing
our soothing carefully cultured worldview
our cherished illusions our treasured myths
should our sanctified paradigms
suffer the catastrophic shocks
of seismic psychic shifts

the fear of losing faith in our beliefs
belief in authority trust in our chiefs;
of losing the approval pride and prestige
we derive from our tribe;

of losing the luxury of blindly relying
on the autopilot of our hive-mind bias
and the facile validation it implicitly provides;

of losing the ability to guiltlessly choose
authorized lies over unsanctioned truths
and with it the potential to revel
in less-than-ethical careers;
of losing the herd-conferred comfort
of groupthink-bolstered safety in numbers
<..>
the searing fear of becoming
victims of shunning
cast out for simply succumbing
to the stunning confusion
that sure as the turning of tides would ensue
from learning the disturbing unsavoury truth

a visceral fear of being forced to accept
that in fact we've been thoroughly duped;
of finding ourselves compelled
to somehow muster the gumption
to acknowledge our folly in having embraced
misplaced loyalties and false assumptions

the primal fear of being stripped
of so much we identify with and to which
our senses of self self-worth and purpose
are inextricably linked;
<...>
and lastly
the ghastly dread of being swallowed whole
by the excruciating pain of shame
that racks our souls
<...>
as our smugly-unexamined self-satisfied lives
implode on inspection
their deceptions exposed
now naked as babes to our unshuttered eyes.