As you have gone about your daily life, you may have heard mention of a metaphorical choice between a red pill and a blue pill. Of these Wikipedia reports, “The red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, are pop culture symbols representing the choice between embracing the sometimes painful truth of reality (red pill) and the blissful ignorance of illusion (blue pill). 
In his April 2006 General Conference talk, “Zion in the Midst of Babylon“, Elder David R. Stone states, “People in every culture move within a cocoon of self-satisfied self-deception, fully convinced that the way they see things is the way things really are.” This sounds a lot like a description of those who have chosen to remain in blissful ignorance by taking “the blue pill”. He goes on to describe many of the ways our “Babylonian” culture controls us “like puppets on a string” by conditioning our values and goals.
The more I have studied and pondered the differences between the great societal archetypes of Zion and Babylon, the more I feel like I have taken the red pill and had my eyes opened from the blue pill’s “blissful ignorance of illusion” that Babylon pulls over our eyes.
I have come to see that our American culture has morphed into one saturated by the values of Babylon (gratifying pride through seeking power, gain and glory), and most of us ignorantly follow it’s directives assuming the world knows best. Over the past 150 years, our social institutions, schools, businesses, and governments, have all adopted Babylonian organizational principles and methods, and most of us appear to be blind to them all.
It is sad that mankind has been so easily mislead by the Great Deceiver into believing “all is well in Zion” when, in fact, we are rapidly approaching the very unpleasant results of our chronic sickness due to the Pride Flu. Babylon, a society based on pride, cannot avoid its natural consequences of war and destruction. Now I understand how prophets of old could foresee destruction and warn the people to “repent or be destroyed”. There is no other option.
That the majority of Americans will ever “awake to a sense of [their] awful situation” seems rather unlikely. My hope is that there will be enough that are willing to “take the red pill” and face the reality of our situation and work together to prepare for the likely self-destruction of the American way of life. We can begin that effort by building institutions that are based in humility rather than pride. Although “pride goeth before destruction“, humility endures forever, and that is the kind of society we should be seeking to build – one based firmly on humility before God and mutual-respect among our fellowmen.