At some point I realized that the nice examples from the books never mapped to the real world as cleanly. Exceptions were pretty useful, local mutability made lots of things easier, and category theory has no place in calling JSON apis over http.
I think a great number of talented programmers never learn that lesson, and continue futzing about with theoretical purity for its own sake.
I think you're on to something there, except for the "job security" part. I've met very few people in tech who are concerned about losing their jobs, and fewer of them would make things much more complex---they didn't have the skills.
In fact, most of the majority I have known who produced complexity were optimizing for nerd status and resume building, but would quit rather than maintain their own complex code.
But the thing that optimizes for nerd status and job security and resume building is to increase complexity, because most people cannot appreciate the sophistication of simplicity in some technological niche, and it is not easily communicated.
And then there is the question of what gives you joy? I find that for most coders, their primary motivation is not to solve a customer problem in the quickest, simplest and most efficient way, but to challenge themselves with riddles and learn new tech and follow fashion. This definitely varies by culture - Golang and Haskell are on opposite ends in that spectrum.
Overcoming delusion means to exit one's own mind and observe the real world. Looking at useful and well-made software, in which language is it implemented in? A Haskell fan will have no trouble talking for hours about how its concepts are superior. But he will not notice that there is barely any popular software written in Haskell out there, and he will not understand what that implies.