The True Believer was certainly one of my reference books. Though I think to better understand what is going on, we have to step back from society, especially its political movements and better understand the underlaying dynamics. The larger the issues, the more basic the denominators causing and defining them.
When it's millions and billions of people, it's not so much culture and politics, as it's physics and biology. We are linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality.
Consider that logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images on it.
Ideal are not absolutes and assuming them to be does empower the fanatics. It was a useful method of social control, to think Big Daddy is watching your every move, but the philosophers should have picked it apart a little better by now.
Also good and bad are not some cosmic conflict between righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. An ideal good makes as much sense as the perfect yes.
Consider the most elemental dynamic are waves, which tend to either synchronize, which is centripetal, or harmonize, which is centrifugal. So we have nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems. As this sentient interface between body and world, there is a cultural inclination toward synchronization over harmonization and that goes to a lot of issues.
Here is an attempt to flesh out some of these ideas;
https://johnbrodixmerrymanjr.medium.com/the-cliffs-edge-2b382ae2a73
