I think there are a fair number of cultural cobwebs we need to clear out of the collective attic, in order to both understand the current phase and move beyond it.

First is our concept of time. As mobile organisms, this sentient interface between body and context manifests as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so we think of time as the point of the present, moving past to future. Physics codifies it as measures of duration.

The reality is change turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Duration is the present, as the events rise and fall.

There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.

Energy is "conserved," because it is the present, creating time, as well as temperature, pressure, color and sound. Time is frequency, events are amplitude.

So energy, as present, goes past to future, while the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall.

Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it's the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy and feeding the flame, while the central nervous system sorts the information.

Consider galaxies are energy radiating out, as structure coalesces in.

So not only do the process and the patterns generated go opposite directions of time, but one coalesces inward, as the waves synchronize, while the other radiates outward, harmonizing across the universe. So, nodes and networks, organisms and ecosystems, particles and fields.

The reality then, is dualistic, while we, at least in the West, are indoctrinated to a monolithic worldview.

Logically a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. That light shining through the film, rather than the images it illuminates.

Ideals are not absolute and assuming them to be creates an inherently conflicted society, as everyone assumes their ideals to be absolute.

Remember democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures, the many as one, while Rome adopted a monotheistic sect as its state religion, as the Empire solidified and remnants of the Republic faded. The Big Guy rules.

The origin of Christianity was that age old conflict between renewal and tradition, with the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus as a metaphor for a society that had become set in stone and needed to lighten up, but after awhile the Romans successfully co-opted the Revolution and it was the same old, same old.

Michael Hudson wrote a book some years ago, titled, Forgive Them Their Debts. That the biggest civilizational stumbling block was the invention of compound interest being used to drain all life and wealth out of the majority of society, requiring the occasional debt jubilee to continue functioning. Remember Jesus was all peace, love and turn the other cheek, except when it came to the moneychangers.

So the Romans changed it to, Forgive them their Sins, as a perfect 180 and keep the masses in a state of guilt over this world and waiting for their reward in the next.

The fact is that money functions as a social contract, enabling markets, but we are led to believe it is a commodity to mine from them.

Government, as executive and regulatory function, is analogous to the central nervous system, while money and banking serve as blood and the circulation system of the communal body.

We have come to realize government is a public utility, but have not yet realized the same principle applies to banking. Which has given banking the upper hand, since they are not as subject to oversight and don't have to plan around election cycles.

Consequently they have hollowed out government, leaving increasingly spineless flunkies filling the roles, whose only real function, beyond protecting their benefactors, is creating as much public debt as possible, since it is a primary asset class for the banks and financial markets. The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.

The wars are just a way to make it go away, so more can be borrowed.

I could go on, but the problem is not just in the metaphysical realm, but the practical, everyday reality.