> and the same psychological glitches which are exploited in order to produce compliant citizens are also exploited by would-be cult leaders to control their unfortunate members.

That's only true in part.

Cults typically play on combinations of specific aspects of psychology, and generally a given cult will only "work" on certain people.

The same is true for parenting and education. Not all children can be effectively parented (or cultily-parented to take your view for a moment) by their specific parents, and certainly not all children can be indoctrinated, let alone educated as intended in a given environment.

Further, I think it's wise to add in these cases that a thing can be systematic and be explained in an organized manner to appear as if it's organized and systematic on purpose, and even designed by specific individuals, when none of that is actually the case. Otherwise we only-humans tend to start looking for someone to blame, effectively hallucinating.

And in many cases the problem you describe can be fixed without unraveling society and _already is being fixed automatically in many ways_. But that also requires going into lots of details to discuss; the generalities alone, while exciting or fear-inducing in isolation, tend to resolve down to too much hand-waving.

A lot of good people are out there working their @$$ses off helping people work together to improve society, bringing the best parts forward while leaving this unwanted stuff behind us.