Maybe we need to examine our assumptions, before trying to understand what meaning they might have.

There seems to be a sense of some overarching ethical structure, but that it's just not come into focus yet. What if we are looking at the entire situation backwards?

Are good and bad ultimately a cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, or are they the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental? The1/0 of sentience?

People have spent several millennia seeking out the ideal moral code, but what if it is actually evolved, emergent, dynamic and continuously developing, along with complex life forms and the societies they create?

If that is the case, then trying to understand the process as a function of our own evolved ideals and aspirations seems like trying to make sense of computer programming by playing video games.

We need to look under the hood, not just map out the journey.

Otherwise, assuming good as aspirational, rather then elemental, tends to become a race to the bottom, as all nuance and subjectivity is viewed as suspect.