Being blackpilled isn’t just for incels anymore — a 2025 analysis points to a rising “cultural nihilism” among Gen Z in America, marked by a sense of helplessness where change feels impossible, and life seems meaningless.
Gallup reports “the percentage of US adults who report currently having or being treated for depression has exceeded 18 percent in both 2024 and 2025, up about eight percentage points since the initial measurement in 2015.”
According to a YouGov survey, almost 20 percent of Americans under the age of 30 believe that using violence for political purposes can, at times, be warranted.
Both the “woke right” and “woke left” push a worldview rooted in black-pilled fatalism. Despite naming different villains — whether white racism, capitalism, the Deep State, Jews, feminists, or others — their narratives undermine individual responsibility.
By insisting that overwhelming external forces control life, the woke factions across the spectrum encourage what Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck calls a fixed mindset — a belief that fate is determined by factors like genetics or rigged systems, making personal effort seem pointless and fueling nihilism.
Dweck writes in her book Mindset, “Many people with the fixed mindset think the world needs to change, not them. They feel entitled to something better — a better job, house, or spouse. The world should recognize their special qualities and treat them accordingly.”
At times, we all experience moments of black pilled thinking — feeling like failures or victims and questioning whether our lives have meaning. When these thoughts arise, Dweck’s research on personal mindsets offers an antidote. Our mindset beliefs about intelligence and ability shape how we navigate life.
Dweck observes a defensive internal monologue common among those with a fixed mindset:
Will I look smart or dumb?
Will I be accepted or rejected?
Will I feel like a winner or a loser?
These questions characterize the fixed mindset belief that intelligence and capabilities are static, unchangeable traits.
Dweck explains that a person with a fixed mindset is easily frightened by challenges because they believe that any failure serves as a permanent verdict on their worth. This belief creates a paralyzing cycle in which the individual becomes more concerned with image than with improvement. Dweck reveals how “believing that your qualities are carved in stone… creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.”
In a fixed mindset, individuals tend to hide mistakes rather than seek the feedback and practice needed for growth. The emotional toll is heavy; Dweck compares the experience to “always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens.”
The antidote to this stagnation and the prospect of sliding into nihilism is the growth mindset. Rather than seeing abilities as a birthright, this perspective views them as a starting point. Dweck defines it as follows:
This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. Although people may differ in every which way — in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments — everyone can change and grow through application and experience.
Importantly, research shows individuals may feel confident and growth-oriented in one domain and fixed in another. The key to a transformative mindset shift is self-awareness — identifying where fixed beliefs constrain us so we can begin adopting beliefs that enable change.
A growth mindset doesn’t take the sting out of failure, but it reframes its meaning into fuel for practice. As Dweck writes, “Even in the growth mindset, failure can be painful. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.”
With a growth mindset, personal liberty means exercising positive opportunities to voluntarily experiment, fail, and adjust to develop one’s capacities on a path to a meaningful life. Liberty means more than a negative condition marked by the absence of coercion or interference in one’s personal affairs.
This can be called a personal decentralized discovery process of trial and error within the self. A growth mindset is simply an internalized commitment to the same process we celebrate in a liberal society where the market mechanism is characterized by decentralized experimentation, feedback, and adaptation. That is the choice between being an entrepreneur and a rent-seeking crony.
Here are some mindset strategies for shifting to a growth mindset.
Go for the Small Win
Remember that Dweck is advocating a process, not a miraculous all-at-once shift. The black-pilled, fixed-mindset person — and at times, that can be any of us — needs small wins — experiences where effort actually produces change.
The legendary former football coach at the University of Alabama, Nick Saban, relentlessly taught his players to focus on executing their roles on each play, emphasizing process over outcome.
A growth mindset creates a philosophical framework for noticing the importance of these wins. You want to be able to observe mentally: I tried a new strategy, and it worked. This proves change is possible through my effort.
A growth mindset doesn’t deny obstacles or pretend there are no differences in abilities.
In contrast, those with a fixed mindset spiral into an unvirtuous nihilistic funk. Excuses are made for the lack of effort, and then failure proves to them that their excuses were correct.
Become More Aware of Your Metacognitive Patterns
Metacognition is your thinking about your thinking. A person with a fixed mindset holds fixed beliefs about their thinking itself, such as I can’t change how I think. Or I am what I am and I can’t change.
The latest generations of cognitive therapy are Metacognitive Therapy (MCT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Their research shows that metacognitive beliefs can change, and the first step is becoming aware of our thinking patterns without justifying them. Such awareness breaks the emotional spiral that leads to hopelessness and despair.
The black-pilled worldview is built on fixed-mindset premises, such as:
Society is inherently unjust.
My efforts have no effect.
The growth mindset antidote is:
My sustained effort impacts outcomes.
MCT thinkers don’t reference Dweck, but their analysis of the Cognitive Attentional Syndrome (CAS) describes precisely what happens psychologically when we adopt a fixed mindset about our problems. We ruminate on our fixed mindset beliefs. We seek information that confirms our beliefs, and then our coping behaviors backfire.
This is fixed mindset thinking at the metacognitive level. People believe their thinking patterns are unchangeable: This is just how my mind works. So, they never attempt the strategies that would actually help.
A fixed mindset about one’s own thinking is a primary mechanism underlying psychological suffering. When people adopt a growth mindset, not just about abilities but also about their thought patterns, they become willing to experiment with new ways of loosening the hold their conditioned thought patterns have on them.
Make Meaning and Serve Your Purpose
You may have found that the more meaning you have in your life, the more resilient you are in facing life’s challenges. Dweck’s growth mindset directly creates a framework for ongoing meaning-making: the perpetual project of self-development.
The champion of human flourishing, Leonard Read, wrote in his book Elements of Libertarian Leadership: “Man’s purpose here is to grow, to emerge, to hatch, to evolve in consciousness.”
Read argues that without an anchor of a foundational purpose, we act aimlessly:
With our lives anchored to nothing, we tend to believe and act aimlessly; that is, we obey emotional compulsions instead of adhering strictly to the disciplines imposed by some transcendental premise or value or principle.
Read aligns with Dweck’s emphasis on the importance of having a guiding framework for personal development and the belief that one’s abilities and intelligence can be developed through effort and learning.
Nihilists are constrained by their fixed mindsets. Champions of liberty with a growth mindset find meaning in their lives and contribute to the very foundations of a flourishing society.
