Good point. Joining a group introduces a level of implied assent to the group's publicly visible aspects. As Eliezer suggests, if there's a net gain from the utility of the positive aspects of the group less the utility of the negative, on the balance it's worth consideration as long as the negatives aren't fundamental issues. The issue is managing that implied assent.

Perhaps another way to look at this is to explore how to cultivate an individual persona that exhibits independence, but also exhibits a visible capability to deliberately subsume that independence to further group goals, i.e. determine how to show others that you can work with a group while disagreeing on non-core principles. It seems that a great deal of politics involves application of this paradigm.