People need to learn to disassociate the 'cultural movement' from the ideology.

Read what Chomsky has to say about postmodernism.

Look at the evolution of 'String Theory'. Thousands of PhDs minted in something that may have no relevance to anything. A 'nice try' but with a lot of budget.

Look at Scientology / Dianetics (that one is pretty hard).

'Movements' are almost always about the 'Movement', and the ideology often seems to take a back seat.

The 'Movement' is something almost nominal to rally around, that helps create a 'form' for a loose consensus.

It inspires some people to act as though they are doing something for a 'greater good' (whether they are or not), and for leaders to dereference their apparent authority towards that greater ideal.

Imagine if all of these 'ideas' were just left as 'ideas' or maybe 'ideals' and that's that - and there were no groups, meetups, nobody really publicly 'aligned' with them or signalled their participation.

Then we'd have a better notion of what these ideas really hard.

But in reality, they are 'social movements', groupings, ways for people to signal their special merit or alignment.

It's social politics. Red v Blue. Bloods v Crips. Insiders v Outsiders. Specials v Normies. Nobility v Plebes. Citizens v Slaves.

It gets problematic when the groups get power, people believe in their own gibberish, people places all of their faith in group leaders even when actions by the group defy the nature of the movement itself.

"We're breaking the rules of finance and stealing from people because 'we're the good guys', right? Everything we do is in the name of ... 'good' ... so we can do pretty much anything". etc.

Look at it first through the lens of the social organization, then separately through the lens of ideals.

The evolution of effective altruism