Ronin1Eye asks, and answers, “How to conduct oneself in a world gone mad?”

Does not a world in chaos produces people in crisis?  We live in an era where meaning is unclear, identity is fluid, and purpose is lost. Many feel disoriented, as if adrift in a sea of conflicting ideologies, bombarded by contradictory messages with no clear path forward. This is not accidental—it is the result of forces that seek to strip individuals of their ability to think independently, act decisively, and live with purpose.

Read this quote from the WSJ. It is another way of considering the material from The Matrix.  

 “Science, technology, the free market and the liberal democratic state have enabled us to reach unprecedented achievements in knowledge, freedom, life expectancy and affluence. But they do not answer the three questions that every reflective individual will ask at some time in his or her life: Who am I? Why am I here? How then shall I live? The result is that the 21st century has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.”

Most people suppress such questions beneath routine, distraction, ideology, or entertainment. Yet the questions remain. They emerge in moments of silence, crisis, exhaustion, or awakening. They arise when the structures surrounding us no longer fully explain the world we inhabit.

We live in an age of extraordinary technological power and deep cultural confusion. Information expands endlessly, yet clarity becomes increasingly rare. Institutions multiply credentials while often failing to produce wisdom, coherence, or disciplined thought. Public discourse becomes louder, more emotional, and more fragmented. Many sense that something is wrong, but cannot clearly name it. 

Why? 

Because human beings do not merely think within culture. They are shaped by it.

Every civilization transmits a largely invisible framework of assumptions — a worldview, a thought-system, a cultural unconscious. It shapes perception long before individuals become aware of it. It influences what people consider normal, possible, moral, intelligent, or even real.

Most never recognize the system itself. 

In The Matrix, Morpheus presents Neo with a choice. The scene became iconic not because of special effects, but because it dramatizes a profound human possibility: that the world we take for granted may be structured by forces and assumptions we rarely examine. 

The Red Pill is therefore more than a cinematic device. It is a metaphor for awakening to the hidden structures that shape perception, culture, and thought. 

This site begins with a simple proposition:

Much of what modern people call “thinking” is often the repetition of inherited assumptions occurring inside systems they do not yet perceive. RISE2 is an attempt to move beyond that condition. 

RISE2 is an acronym for:

Reason.

Intuition.

Science.

And out goal,  Enlightenment.2

This is not a political movement, nor a personality cult, or another ideology demanding obedience. Rather, an effort to develop a more advanced orientation toward “reality “— grounded in systems thinking, operational definitions, scientific awareness, and disciplined self-examination. 

The goal is not merely to criticize civilization, but to understand the processes shaping it.

Here you will encounter ideas drawn from:

• General Semantics: How much of your reality exists only in language?
• Paradigm Analysis: Are you thinking your own thoughts, or merely repeating the thoughts of your culture?
• Cultural Anthropology: If you had been born in another civilization, what would you now believe to be self-evidently true?
• Systems Theory: Why do intelligent people repeatedly fail to see the systems that control outcomes?
• Neuroscience: Can you trust the brain that is attempting to understand itself?
• Martial Arts: How do you remain centered while others are swept away by fear, anger, and confusion?

You will also encounter difficult possibilities: That culture can function like a closed system of thought, and that language forms perception. That institutions can preserve obsolete paradigms long after reality has changed, and that modern people, prisoner to those paradigms, may possess immense information while lacking coherent orientation. 

But you will also encounter another possibility: that you can recognize and escape these obsolete paradigms, and recognize those that create advanced civilization while giving you free-will. Consider; the martial artist understands that transformation begins with seeing clearly. The scientist understands that progress begins with questioning assumptions. The free mind understands that no civilization should become immune to examination. 

You are not being asked to accept a doctrine. Rather you are being invited to examine the system itself. The choice, as always, remains yours.  You can remain within inherited assumptions and be a pin-ball person  Pinball is a simple game: you load the ball, pull the plunger, and let it go. The ball shoots forth, careening off obstacles until it comes to rest. The pinball has no will of its own; it merely follows the forces that act upon it. So too do the automatons of the world—they read the signs, follow the signs, and never choose their own path.   What is the “meaning of life,” to a pinball?