The original "Red Pill" is from a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix.
Morpheus offers
Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question “what is the Matrix?” (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As
Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns
Neo “Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.”
Why is the choice between what you believe you know and an unknown ‘real’ truth so fascinating? How could a choice possibly be made? On the one hand everyone you
love and everything that you have built you life upon. One the other the
promise only of truth.
The question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these circumstances. The question is asking
us whether
reality, truth, is worth pursuing. The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit, of things we believe we know. We are comfortable, we do not need truth to live. The blue pill symbolises commuting to
work every day, or brushing your teeth.