What if more souls incarnated here in human form increases the likelihood of recent and new souls experiencing this reality for the first time? These 'entryists' attempt to grasp and put meaning to the world in the ways they are capable but the 'notes' they add to the 'tune' add a particular 'tempo' to the spirit of the times and this expresses itself in certain ways?

What if the Klan and the woke are both of the same 'pitch' and the nature of that energy causes patterns to ripple but can also be an effective boot to the rump for others. That those subsets are a fractal of something bigger (etc etc), and this current reality we experience as a species, and the opportunities presented to us are 'tuned' towards certain possibilities where we have choices to make in a particular 'class' of existence; then, the rhyming of history and human behaviours expressed would be as predictable as the rise and fall of civilisations.
The civilisations are irrelevant and it is the choices made by the individualities where the interesting stuff might be found and civilisations manifesting is just a by-product.

Reality here is groundhog day but with infinite variations on certain themes - but those infinite varations play out in a constrained reality (vibrational pitch) and it is only when we can develop more awareness that new 'tunes' will present themselves.
Or a merry-go-round.
The earth is a spinning merry-go-round spinning around a star that is also on it's own journey. Gears within gears within gears.

So, as the emotional maelstrom of the astral plays itself out in the physical/material of this world, this is what the choices are about: that the work we do in the world is about the opportunity to develop potential of the mental plane etc (as you have been exploring in CosDoc?)

Souls come in, visit a while, then move on to other experiences if and when they become capable of that.

Using your analogy of 'humans being pretty low on the scale between pond-scum and the gods', then the likelihood of golden times could be a vision of potential but beyond the possibilities for this realm since the souls moving in other directions are replaced by those who are new here or still have things to do.

Meaning the fundamentals of this place are likely to oscillate between extremes but expressed as infinite possibilities constrained by a certain set of potentials... there is only so much that can be done at this level - if we want more, we need to grow (a mental body)

So this reality is perfect as it is for giving what it needs to, and this is why things seem to go in cycles of similarity and sameness. Reading Marcus Aurelius writing about people, things (behaviours) do not seem much changed between then and now; if there was an equivalent from 100,000 years ago, I wonder if we'd see the same things playing out? It''s not the canvas of reality but the moves we make.

We are here with certain attributes and over lifetimes have the opportunity to grow if we pay attention, avoid pitfalls, and develop beyond base emotional levels.

What methods work at any time depends on various matters - one person's method can also be another's madness/foolishness and can act as a barrier to development of the mental and other more subtle bodies.

I thought you put it well the other day about certain mystic paths (and I probably paraphrase badly here): stunning the lower selves into quietude which sometimes allows the higher self to be used as the vehicle for perceiving this world... but with inherent instability, so fleeting.

We appear to have good times and bad times, most of those who can move on do so, some stay to help a while, others take over their mantles (a station rather than a person [THE Merlin], but we get cycles of certain vibration where the woke and klan and the rest of the illusory left/right themes (of our time) play themselves out with predicable bloody results - souls either learn from it and develop, or do not.

Periodically, the slate gets swept clean and off things go again.

Walking in the world at the moment is like being a ghost - I am here but my attachments with people are thin.
Apologies for the stream of consciousness rambling!

[earthworm]

Perhaps you are just seeing tail behavior on a normal distribution. If you measure almost any personality trait across a large group you'll almost certainly get a normal/guassian distribution, and I would expect the same if you were to look at whichever trait has conservatives on one end and liberals on the other. The majority of the population will fall in the middle somewhere (moderate) and a tiny number of people will be way out on the extreme fringes of either tail. The thing with people on the tails is that they have extreme positions/thinking/behaviors and they tend to make a lot of noise and attract attention. So even though the majority of the population is behaving itself, the small number of extremists at the tails will have an outsized impact on the dynamics, making them appear more prominent than they are. I'm sure that applies to all groups/populations including secret societies and archdruid commentariats.I imagine the topics of discourse impact which trait distributions are highlighted.