I think a lot about the issues you have touched on here. What you refer to as, "reality-defiance", I call, "knowledge immunity".
Long story short, by my estimation what has "arrested this direction of travel" and "reinstated local bubbles of thought" is fear, the mind killer, and where they've headed, is back into superstition, global superstition, where they substitute whatever comfortable story, for whatever uncomfortable reality.
Long story short, by my estimation what has "arrested this direction of travel" and "reinstated local bubbles of thought" is fear, the mind killer, and where they've headed, is back into superstition, global superstition, where they substitute whatever comfortable story, for whatever uncomfortable reality.