Another way to frame it is that we are socialized to assume the ideal as universal, in order for the group to function as one.

Good and bad are not some cosmic duel between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken. Even bacteria recognize the difference.

All our higher order social aspirations; love, honor, trust, respect, responsibility, etc. are emergent with our evolution. So when we view "good" as an ideal, conflicts become a race to the bottom, of us versus them, good versus bad. Rather than being able to assume the other will hold to evolved standards and use such situations for further development.

The reality is that life is that dichotomy of desire and judgement, the heart and the head. Our desires, individual and communal, are many, so there has to be some process of selection, or nature will do it for us. We can't have our cake and eat it too. Not every acorn gets to be an oak tree. We have sort through the many impulses and organize them. That's why we evolved a brain and not just gut and reproductive organs.

So society does have to establish some structure and order, even if it's not perfect and occasionally needs to be reset. The group has to function as a whole.

Monotheism, the father figure lawgiver, originated as a way to instill respect for authority. Yet a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The fact we are aware, than the details of which we are aware.

The Ancients were not ignorant of monotheism, but as there was no separation of culture and civics, it equated with authoritarianism. One god, one ruler. Divine right of kings.

While Greek democracy and Roman republicanism developed in pantheistic societies. Many voices, power centers, many gods. These were the Ancient's version of multiculturalism, as tribal societies coalesced into territorial nation and city states. The Roman Empire adopted Catholicism as it was cementing its role as an empire. When the West went back to more populist forms of government, it required a separation of church and state, culture and civics.

While the power of monotheism has faded, it still casts a long shadow over all the movements, beliefs and ideologies to follow, as the premise of the group ideal is taken as absolute and so there can be no live and let live, when the Other is taken as an affront to one's own true ideals.

Any society on earth, throughout history, will have those seeking to transcend culture and convention and those seeking to enforce it. Liberals and conservatives.

Yet because we have this paradigm of monist idealism, both sides, in our own culture, see themselves as on the one true path and those going the other way as misbegotten fools.

It's more yin and yang, than God Almighty.