For most of recorded history–history in general being written by agriculturally based societies which quickly developed power structures–humans have lived in cults of various sorts. You could think of a cult as a “mass formation” of the sort Mattias Desmet wrote about, but oriented around metaphysics. People will both live and die for their cults, for their people, for the beliefs that have become a part of their core sense of self.
And thus it should not be surprising that many people only get out of a cult by joining a new one. There may be in intermediate phase of, what?: social alienation, unregulated generalized anxiety, and non-specific aggression, which “fixes” when that person adopts a new cult.
And what does a cult–and it just hit me that culture is over half “cult”–do? It tells you what you are allowed to see and think, and what you are NOT allowed to see–even if it is in front of you–and what you are not allowed to think or of course say.
In my view, the entire progress of civilization depends on getting past these sorts of mass formations, these collective and in the modern era collectivist psychoses.
The key to all human progress is empowering every set of eyes and ears and brains and noses on the Earth to perceive independently.
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And the related thought I will perhaps expand later is that life is fuller for those who feel they have less to lose. Anyone who is STUCK in a cultural structure, or lifestyle of one sort or another, is simply living the same day over and over. They will grow little.
When you have little to lose, you RISK. You put yourself out there. And you get broken sometimes. Bad things can happen. Certainly, unexpected things WILL happen.
But this is the game. This is how you play. Those with the least to lose gain the most. This is in the Tao Te Ching, so it MUST be true.
That joke was for the ghost of Lao Tse.