Dude. Join. If anything it'll accelerate your getting to know the game. I remember Isildur the character in Masters. It totally made my day when I finally got inducted. Why? Because you had to interview with all five (yeah, freaking five interviews) Lord Adepts and know all this "secret" (so I thought) stuff in order to get in. So finally I scraped together enough knowledge in game to get inducted. Was neat. Got to interact with alot more people, got killed (fast) in lots of raids, etc. Got some nifty gear (cube of force) from a guy that was deleting (Graatch) which I promptly lost. Brewed lots of potions for the heck of it.

My point: nobody expects you to know everything to be in a cabal. If anything, your properly role-playing a lack of knowledge will just make the experience all the more gratifying. Bottom line: don't be whiney, don't be wussy, and you'll do fine.