There is a sense in which anybody that takes one step away-from obedience to "authority", will continue to diverge - will continue to become more of what they have started.
There is the observed fact that failure on one Litmus Test issue, or failure on a new Litmus Test as it arises, almost always leads towards greater corruption. And in this case, the corruption is an (in practice) assimilation towards the totalitarian program.
So people take a first step, and implicitly accept the authority of those who launched and the Birdemic/ Peck international coup; or who provoked and escalated the Fire Nation conflict; or who propagandized and imposed the post November 2022 "AI" pseudo-revolution...
Doing this involves both a decision to accord authority to the powers who have devised and sustained these strategies - and also the decision to submit (to a significant extent) to that authority.
So it is obvious why a Litmus Test failure is usually a significant step towards further corruption; because the powers being accorded authority are overall-evil in their motivations.
A Litmus test failure is therefore a decision to confer authority upon evil; and a decision to obey that evil.
In the short term, this "feels good" - exactly because totalitarian evil is dominant (especially in The West); and in joining oneself with The System (even to what is, initially, a limited extent) there is a sense of becoming "part of something bigger", and of a large world of increased opportunities for personal status, power, wealth.
So when someone chooses a Litmus Test failure; this is not something they do with shame; but something boasted-about - and (as far as possible) parlayed into increased career, business or social opportunities.
The public discourse is full of people who have one or more radically dissenting opinions - but whose Litmus Test fails are actually the basis of their fame, or wealth, or other appeal.
Some of these happy-successful-collaborators are individuals (entrepreneurs of one sort or another; whether would be "me cultists" or money-seekers, or combinations) - but many are church-Christians of one sort or another.
This is how it looks to me. But I can see that there is a superficially similar critique operating from the perspective of "traditional" Christian religious orthodoxy of the kind that sees "Christianity" as an entity defined and controlled by some particular church.
Any individual who steps away from the institutionally-controlled and -validated orthodoxy of Christianity; can be seen to be on the road to heresy - because having rejected church-authority and been disobedient in one respect - nearly-always leads to further rejections and disobediences.
Therefore, the traditional orthodoxy of the favoured church is defended strongly by asserting that church's primary authority; because the alternative is likely to be a collapse of "faith" that (it seems) does not have an end point - and leads (it seems) to Christian apostasy: abandoning the faith altogether.
This perception is almost inevitable if and when somebody believes that Christianity Just Is embodied in external institutional authority.
For an individual to assert his personal authority to discern the nature of Christianity; and to accord primacy to (what he believes) is a direct and unmediated relationship with Jesus Christ, and God - is therefore regarded by the traditionalist as "the same thing" as mainstream atheistic materialism and its accompanying New Age hedonism.
For the trad-orthodox church-based religious person; true authority is always external, and true virtue always depends on voluntary obedience to external authority - but the crucial distinction is between the real and valid authority of their church; and not the false authority of global totalitarianism.
So heresy seems analogous to a Litmus Test failure.
Yet from my Romantic Christian (Christian individual) perspective; the trad-orthodox church-based Christians have in fact failed one after another of the Litmus Tests, and continue to do so!
And for the simple reason that their churches are In Fact part-of the System of global totalitarianism.
It is a question of whether one is opting-out or opting-in; and what is being opted-into or out-from. It is a question also of the decision about ultimate authority - is authority merely inner, outer-institutional to be obeyed - or is it aspirationally-rooted in a personal relationship-with the divine.
And that, in turn, is based on what one regards as possible. Mainstream materialists regard the divine as false and impossible. Church-Christians regard the divine as necessarily institutionally-mediated.
But Romantic Christians regard the divine as real and rooted in personal relationship.
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