Suddenly he was devoting all his time to studying rites and rituals, almost cutting out contact with is family, and taking up extra jobs so he could send money to this guru.

My dad met this guru once when he visited here in Norway. My dad said he spent way more time talking about the stock market than anything spiritual.

Yet to this day, a couple of decades later, their son is still laboring hard for this guy.

I did get to speak to him a few times after he had converted. For me this whole thing was utterly bewildering.

Looking back at us growing up, I suppose what he was seeking was somewhere to belong. It wasn't about this or that religion specifically, that seemed almost incidental, looking in from the outside.

His life had gotten a new meaning: follow these rites and rituals, and do whatever this guy says. In return he got a sense of belonging.

Still really weird to me, and still very hard for his parents. But their son willingly and with open eyes embraced this.

I've reflected on this several times, and my conclusion is that some people just want to believe, so they can belong.

America has a long history of "preachers", and "evangelists". I was in a thread yesterday that referenced Johnny Appleseed who was ministering and planting nurserys.

There is "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinners_in_the_Hands_of_an_Ang... ) That continues to be looked at and dwelled upon.

This carries through into modern times... Sam Kinison who was a famous and very distinct comedian gets a lot of his style from being a tent revival style preacher (You can watch is comedy that is very NSFW and his preaching its an interesting counter point). Mind you Sam is a contemporary of Jim Baker (a massive scandal that makes this one look small), and his wife Tammy Fay. And in the very present The show The Righteous Gemstones makes fun of the excess and money that preachers can generate.

This is no longer an exclusively offline type of localism either. There is no shortage of online bubbles that are well insulated from outside perspectives.

It’s not even a “poor, dumb people” thing. We are all subject to the network effect and must make continuous active effort to avoid sinking into a comfortable echo chamber. I know so many people who grew up combatting religious fundamentalism, dispatching creationist arguments with expert logical fallacy-fu, only to later fall into their own malign belief systems, losing the ability to question. Even academia, where the foundation stones of skepticism and innovative thinking were laid, has bubbles of very smart people whose working environment is being drained of heterodoxy.

For instance, why do people like going to concerts? It's $100 or more to be surrounded by a hostile crowd, probably catch COVID, certainly induce some hearing damage, have zero peace and quiet for hours, etc. None of these "costs" really stack of up course if you find going to concerts rewarding in an emotional sense. If the concert itself never moved you emotionally, it'd be very difficult to see why people would put up with all the additional externalities of the whole event.

This isn't a perfect comparison, but I hope you can see what I'm getting at.