I sorta see/whaddy’a mean/ what you mean. My lyrics are way better, anyway.
I put my head above the parapet, and it ain’t been shot off yet.

Yes, of course. By age 18/19 I realised I wasn’t going to university, even though everything would have been paid for by the ‘state’. Council and government ‘grants.’ I was accepted by York and Sussex to do career oriented stuff that I didn’t particularly want to do, and realised I was being pushed by social and family pressure. I walked away.
By the time I was 24 healing was sort of bursting out of me but it took until 1985 for it to kind of get organised, and found myself standing with a group of people who were insisting on continuing the workshop on consciousness I had been doing in a festival in Talgarth, Wales.
So I accepted the challenge , initially bankrolled it and continued my life as my personal research project along the lines of Carl Jung, Alan Watts and Timothy Leary. (without the drugs, it’s all already there, folks) There is a lot to be said for not requiring Scientific Credibility. Jung failed miserably at that.
One answers to the Divine Principle according to whatever form in which it shows IT self to you and what demands it makes.
Today I am a vehicle mechanic.
Iveco Turbo Daily 111 35S12 long wheelbase.

You had a purpose, whatever it was.

Strange world. But as you will know most of us is busy making it through modern life. Only the few find time these escape holes.
I am walking away https://youtu.be/Dbb7xeZGR-U

But thats what they are already doing. “I got millionaire by cleaning other people’s toilets” is an often said remark in West. 💩  .

Indeed.

The culture of Biden was no different. It’s just that MAGA is a bit more of a catchy label.

It’s the same on all ‘sides’. The pendulum has simply swung the other way and the maga lot have four years of utter nonsense to get out of their collective system.

Tribalism in the broader sense had a purpose back in the day as an evolutionary survival imperative. It still has a purpose in terms of social and societal cohesion.

That’s why, imo, it’s being demonised and labelled as far right or fascist by those who would flood the west with incompatible strangers.

However, when it gets too focused and too strident regarding a particular ideal or individual, it manifests, as you point out, in cultish behaviour. A lot of things are overlooked because, again as you pointed out, it’s ‘our side’ that’s doing them.

It would be fascinating to read a future historian’s account of these interesting times.

Yes, and one might add its no different for Maga Cultists , notice that the things they reviled in their opponents they now embrace because it’s their team doing it.

We are broadly in agreement. My ‘awakening’ was about the same time as yours, albeit for different reasons. Once you see it, you see it everywhere, in all its forms. I’m still finding out about things today and will no doubt find out about more things tomorrow. It’s never-ending. The trick of course is not to go too far. Always try to maintain a semblance of balance, based on evidence and thorough analysis. That isn’t usually a problem though because the evidence is overwhelming, once you know what to look for.

I would disagree slightly where religion is concerned. You say it’s a matter of choice and perhaps in respect of some societies, you are correct. There are others though where it is ingrained from birth and rigidly enforced from there on in. Without delving too much into religion, the people to whom I refer are those who find religion and embrace it once they undergo the transformation you described.

In their minds, they truly have been saved – from .the wilderness of having no narrative to cling to. Not that they would necessarily agree with that description, of course. However, these people can become evangelical in the extreme because they tend to over-compensate as they adjust to their new ‘reality’. They display almost cultish behaviour (without going into how the popular perception might distinguish a cult from a religion – opinions are many and varied) in their disdain for non-believers, in the same way that the covid and climate cultists display such disdain for the rest of us. Like those other groups, some of them simply believe that we haven’t been saved yet, but there’s still time if they bang on about it frequently and loudly enough.

And yes – aspirations are are terrible task master, particularly fuelled as they tend to be by the ever-present media and popular culture.