Eventually we will have to dig down into the forces driving our society.

Our minds function as a process of sorting signals from the noise and while it might seem we would see the most logical, what is far more foundational is that the signals we extract are what synchronizes with our prior models and beliefs, in feedback loops that support and seek further confirmation. Then we bond to those on similar wavelengths. So it is the basis of both thought and society, with that deepest element assigned as religion.

It's like the eye of a storm, the grain of sand at the center of the pearl, even the black hole at the center of the galaxy.

Without that core, the structure will break down. Tower of Babel.

Yet the evident fact is that there is no one universal point of focus. No one god.

Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. The family and cycle of life as godhead.

To the Ancients, monotheism equated with monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Israel was a monarchy.

Ancient Greek religions originated out of fertility rites. The young god, born in the spring, to the old sky god and the earth mother. Though by the Olympians, tradition had prevailed over renewal and Zeus didn't give way to Dionysus. As the old are often loathe to give way to the young.

So the story of Jesus, crucified for questioning the establishment and risen in the spring, had fertile ground to take root.

Though by the time Rome adopted it as state religion, it too had started to calcify and it was the monotheism that served to validate the Empire rising from the ashes of the Republic. The Big Guy Rules. The origins of the Trinity shrouded by the Holy Ghost.

Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom, from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images played out on it.

Truth, beauty, platonic forms are ideals. The creed and heroes at the core of a culture are ideals.

While the universal is the elemental.

Consequently Western culture is formulated around the assumption of ideals as absolute, so there can be no live and let live. No marching to the beat of a different drummer.

Good and bad are not some cosmic conflict, between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental, the 1/0 of sentience.

So while culture is like stories we tell children to get them to behave, nature is some enormous computer that keeps coming up with answers we don't want to hear.

Sometimes too much good is bad and sometimes a little bad can be good, or at least educational.

Which all goes to say, that while our technology is pretty advanced, society is still fairly primal and if one good thing can come from all the pain and suffering, it will be to force us to grow.