I think we need to do a much better job of understanding the basic mechanisms of society and how they are leveraged against organic social health and all about control and wealth extraction.
For example, a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement from which we fell. More the light shining through the film, than the images on it.
Ideals are not absolutes and assuming them to be creates a naturally conflicted society, as there are multitudes of ideals.
Remember democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures and Rome adopted a nominally monotheistic sect as its state religion, as the Empire solidified and remnants of the Republic faded.
It's about rule from above. Divine right of kings.
As for finance, money can't be both medium and store. Blood is a medium, fat is a store. When we turn the medium into the message, we are owned by those controlling it.
