I have to suspend disbelief when I read Rao's sociological theories. They oversimplify and bend things to make reality fit into these elegent intellectual struc

I have to suspend disbelief when I read Rao's sociological theories. They oversimplify and bend things to make reality fit into these elegent intellectual structures, but they are fun to read, and I sometimes gleen novel ways to look at the world. Also, the entire edifice doesn't necessarily need to hold together for his central thesis to be true. I do wonder, though, if he wouldn't come closer to finding the truth if he kept his analysis more grounded, and spent less time playing at building grand theories. It's a neat rhetorical trick to disparage four social trends as cults by suggesting they are all the same phenomenon instead of evaluating each on its own merits, but I wonder if the effect is less to increase the reader's understanding than to simply nudge the reader to take on the same views as the author because the reader is seduced by the order Rao's theories create out of our chaotic reality. It's fun to read in any case.