Comment by api

The book Imagined Communities (Benedict Anderson) touches on this, making the case that in modern times, "nation" has replaced the cultural narrative purpose previously held by "tribe," "village," "royal subject," or "religion."

The shared thread among these is (in ever widening circles) a story people tell themselves to justify precisely why, for example, the actions of someone you'll never meet in Tulsa, OK have any bearing whatsoever on the fate of you, a person in Lincoln, NE.

One can see how this leaves an individual in a tenuous place if one doesn't feel particularly connected to nationhood (one can also see how being too connected to nationhood, in an exclusionary way, can also have deleterious consequences, and how not unlike differing forms of Christianity, differing concepts on what the 'soul' of a nation is can foment internal strife).

(To be clear: those fates are intertwined to some extent; the world we live in grows ever smaller due to the power of up-scaled influence of action granted by technology. But "nation" is a sort of fiction we tell ourselves to fit all that complexity into the slippery meat between human ears).

Because we are currently living in an age of narcissism and tribalism / Identitarianism is the societal version of narcissism.

The question the article is asking is "why did so many cults come out of this particular social milieu", not "why are there a lot of cults in the whole world".

Also, who would want to join an "irrationalist cult" ?

Your profile says that you want to keep your identity small, but you have like over 30 thousand comments spelling out exactly who you are and how you think. Why not shard accounts? Anyways. Just a random thought.