Maybe the problem is that the Western canon is incoherent and a couple thousand years of trying to make it work just keeps going in similar circles.

Consider the concept of absolute; Which is presumably a pure, indivisible state. Other than a brand of vodka, its only common usage is the term absolute zero. The unmoving void.

There is this materialist assumption that if we break matter down, there is some ultimate substance, be it atoms, quanta and now strings. Yet all we really find is positive and negative charge. Which, if they ever truly cancelled out, would be that state of absolute zero. Complete equilibrium.

Consider this is implicit in Special Relativity, as the frame with the longest ruler and fastest clock would be closest to the equilibrium of the vacuum. As opposed to a frame moving at the speed of light, where both are reduced to zero.

In which case, comparisons don't apply. Anything above absolute is relational to everything else above absolute. Context gives meaning.

The only balance to the absolute is the infinite. Zero to infinity.

Truth, on the other hand, is explicitly relational, as the opposite of false. It's like trying to understand the concept of good, irrespective of bad.

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. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken. Even bacteria sense that.

The concept of an absolute good is not only meaningless, but extremely destructive, as the presumption becomes that if some is good, obviously more must be that much better.

When we treat good as aspirational, rather than elemental, conflicts do become a race to the bottom and all the higher order social complexity, nuance and subjectivity is suspect, since it is not black and white.

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.

The Ancients were not ignorant of monotheism, but as there was little distinction between culture and civics, it represented a monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures, as that explained multicultural societies.

The Romans adopted Christianity as the Empire solidified and any remnants of the Republic were being shed. Though it retained vestiges of pantheism in the Trinity. Which was based on the Greek year gods, as symbolic of regeneration. The son reborn of the sky god and earth mother. Obviously the mother was denatured and the premise of regeneration had to be obscured, since the Catholic church laid claim to being the eternal institution. At least until Martin Luther tried to do what Jesus tried with Judaism, push the reset button.

When the West went back to less centralized systems of governance, it required the separation of church and state, culture and civics.

The father figure lawgiver has been a useful device for instilling respect in a constantly regenerating population, but when the idea becomes ingrained that ideals should be absolute, it does tend to warp all the cultural and civic systems to follow, where the most obsessed have an enormous tool to browbeat everyone else.

There is no give and take, no balance, no yin and yang. It's all about the one. Context is irrelevant.

All synchronization and no harmonization.