I realize more and more clearly that if I am to begin and maintain meaningful relationships with other individuals as well as social collectives, I need to have a sufficiently high degree of spiritual compatibility with them, by which I mean that we share more or less the same state of consciousness.
Before I came to this clear realization, especially when I still worked as a linguist, I used to think naively that linguistic and cultural compatibility is the most important one. I wasn't even aware of such things as spiritual compatibility and the state of consciousness.
In my present state of consciousness linguistic and cultural compatibility, such as sharing the same language (in the literal sense of the word) and (more or less) the same cultural background, may still be a necessary condition but definitely isn't a sufficient condition.
In retrospect I can see clearly now why I couldn't stay any longer in such social collectives as academia and the Esperanto movement because of their respective collective ego, which in turn affects and subjugates the majority of their members.
I don't single out these two social collectives because only they show a low state of consciousness. I wish I were wrong, but I'm more and more inclined to think that the majority of members in any social collective are inevitably trapped in its collective ego. I'm also becoming more and more convinced that I'll never be able to feel comfortable in any socia collective.
In the past one year I've discovered the hidden face of some of the people I know personally. I still find it very difficult to accept the fact that they are so deeply (and dangerously) brainwashed by the collective ego of one social collective that I had to make a difficult decision to walk away from them, telling myself that my soul isn't for sale.
Collective ego can be far more dangerous than individual ego, but this doesn't mean that the latter doesn't have a far-reaching negative effect on individuals. Since I know its damage on both myself and my relationships with others very well on my flesh, I feel deep compassion for these prisoners of their egoic minds. But I don't think I can begin and maintain meaningful relationships with them mainly because their true self is blocked by a thick layer of their ego, so inaccessible to me.