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Notes -
It is vague by the simple fact that I didn't have the time to write it more precisely. I try to draw the distinction on the culture warrior fanatic and the regular normies that participate casually because they think that something is wrong. So there is room for the cause and effect thing here also. Are the culture war fanatics created because they are miserable and not well adjusted from the beginning, thus more susceptible to becoming fanatics? The point I'm trying to make is that if you made the culture war a part of your identity it becomes an issue of that you see the enemy tribe everywhere and you are miserable because of it because you are surrounded by them. Living a better life is not an option in that milieu you live in at that time.
It is the whole point I'm trying to make. The fanatic warriors are in the cult and the normies just leave and don't demonstrate to the world that they live a better life than the miserable people living in the tribal stand-off that is the culture war.
Ah, ok. In that case I guess could agree, though you'd have give some indication of where the threshold for a fanatic is. Otherwise we're in danger of turning this into a tautology like "a fanatic is anyone who is miserable"
I don't get it. Sonya was asking why don't more culture warriors try to live a good life, and use that as an argument to convince others. I understood your original comment as "that's not gonna work for them, because they're all miserable", and even "living well is in direct contradiction with being a CW fanatic". I'm saying saying something else - that the whole idea of demonstrating how good your life is, in order to persuade someone of your worldview, is a cult recruitment tactic.
Sure, their "cultural warrior identity" makes them cut out problematic real life friends and relatives out of their lives. i.e. it isolates them from people that might contradict them.
Well this is the actual thing that in my view is that people that get recruited to cults have a void which they try to fill. They don't persaude you to a better worldview, they give you a reason why you feel the void and try to give you something to fill that with. So the performative better way of living is usually inauthentic unless you see yourself filling that void. So I'm just pointing out that CWs found something to fill that void with so they are self selecting out of living "better lives" in a cult or actually meaningful lives outside of cults. Those who found an alternative to CW issues living out a "better life"(within a cult or not) doesn't involve narcissistic virtua signaling online.
But at the end of the day, I'm not a cult psychologist. My interest in cults has been a source of entertainment that has saved me money, time and sanity since I had void once which I knew not to fill with cults that I orbited around in my twenties. So full disclosure I could be talking out of my ass and could be wrong...
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