“When theory becomes an impediment to action, it is time to discard the theory and return naked, that is, without theory, to the world of reality. People become slaves to theory because people are used to meeting expectations they have not originated—to doing what they are told, to having everything mapped out, to having reality prepackaged. People can have antiauthoritarian intention and yet function in a way totally consonant with the demands of authority. The deepest struggle is to root out of us and the institutions in which we participate the requirement that we slavishly conform. But an adherence to ideology, any ideology, can give us the grand illusion of freedom when in fact we are being manipulated and used by those whom the theory serves.”
― Andrea Dworkin, Letters from a War Zone
I found this quote a few years ago and it applied to other things I have observed and been part of and was thinking about. It's not quite a perfect fit here but I often think about how it applies to your first paragraph, and the internal struggle it generates.