Geoff,
I think we really need to develop a better understanding of the nature of reality, before we can effectively change it.
For one thing, the concept of monism is wrong. We are simply seeking some ideal state, but reality is the tension and balance of opposites. Even matter is an effect of polarities.
I would say the basic dichotomy is between energy and form. Galaxies are energy radiating out, as form coalesces in. Our bodies have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, along with a central nervous system to sort through the forms and patterns precipitating out, as well as referee the emotions and impulses bubbling up.
Society is that dichotomy of organic energies bubbling up, as civil and cultural forms coalesce in. Youth and age. Liberal and conservative.
The fallacy of monotheism is that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, bubbling up through life, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell. The new born, not the wise old man. Consciousness seeing knowledge, not any particular form or brand of it. The light shining through the film, than the images on it.
Which leads to the issue of time. As mobile organisms, we experience our reality as flashes of perception, in order to navigate. We then narrate our journeys and build civilizations out of the collected knowledge. So the narrative flow, from past to future, is integral to our experience and culture, yet the reality is that change turns future to past.
Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, in order to inform it, aka, causality and conservation of energy.
Time is an effect, like temperature, pressure, color, etc.
So energy is “conserved,” because there is no physical past for it to recede into, or physical future from which it arrives. It is the changing configuration of this dynamic which creates time.
So process goes past to future, as the patterns generated go future to past.
Consciousness goes past to future, like the projector light, as thoughts go future to past, like the images on the film.
Lives go birth to death, while life shuffles onto the next generation, shedding the old.
Products go start to finish, while the production line points the other way, consuming material and expelling product.
The feedback is that the patterns define and direct the process. Like individual decisions affect the direction of future events. Motor and steering.
As these linear organisms, we assume immortality to be temporal, a continuation of our particular experiences, yet it is only spatial. We are little bubbles of being, in a sea of such bubbles. The networking of which is currently clogged with various pernicious ideas, such as that money can function as both medium of exchange and store of value, but that is another story(Remember blood is a medium, fat is a store...).
So the real conflict and tension in life is between desire and judgement. The heart and the head. The desires are vast and often in conflict, so it is a function of judgement to sort among them and decide which to endorse and which to ignore. That will never go away.
Good and bad are not some cosmic dual between the forces of righteousness and evil, but the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken and there is no middle ground, other than the energy of the chicken becoming a moment of the fox.
We have to realize there are no ups without downs. Otherwise it would be a flatline. The price we pay to feel is that much of it is pain. It is both, or neither.
So if we developed a cultural understanding of reality as cyclical and reciprocal, rather than our current linear, go forth and multiply, bottom line, chase after the pot of gold at the end of the narrative arc, ends justify the means, monolithic belief system, we might better adapt to the fact that we are getting very close to the edge of the global petri dish.
Otherwise…
