My diagnosis as to why society is “sick” goes to many of the conceptual premises which have become established in the evolution of society. Here is a essay where I try going into various of these issues;
For example, our moral code treats good and bad as some cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil, but they are the basic biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of life, from which all the higher order moral colorings and nuances emerge, such as honor, respect, responsibility, affection, empathy, sympathy, humility, etc., emerge.
Consequently when social conflicts occur, rather than each side holding the other to higher standards of evolved civil and cultural behavior, it becomes a race to the bottom, as each side sees it as us, versus them, with any attempt to see all the complexities as weakness.
Necessarily a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, bubbling up through life, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell. So this dynamic does expand out in all directions, interacting as it goes, yet when we confuse the ideal with the absolute, we are somehow led to believe our particular cultural mores are universal, rather than unique expressions of time and place.
Many such misconceptions are built into the fabric of our culture and it is getting to the point wee need a significant reset. Either we engage it intellectually and socially, or it will be what emerges from the ashes, after this culture finishes tearing itself apart.
