The irony is that our intellectual abilities arose as a function of dealing with the difficulties.

Part of the problem is that to cultures good and bad are assumed to be right and wrong. That cosmic conflict between the forces of righteousness and evil.

While the larger reality is they are the biological binary of beneficial and detrimental. The 1/0 of sentience. What is good for the fox, is bad for the chicken.

Too much good can have negative consequences, while trials and tribulations test and strengthen its survivors.

There are not only shades of gray between black and white, but all the colors of the spectrum between light and dark.

The function of culture is to synchronize the community as a larger social super organism, using the same languages, rules, measures, etc. Which then needs that core locus of ideals and goals, to focus and bond. Aka, religions.

Possibly though, we are reaching the stage where we need to actually understand the processes at work and not just be controlled by them.

As linear, goal oriented creatures in this cyclical, circular, reciprocal, feedback generated reality, we have yet to come to terms with the implications of the world being round, not flat.

The age of 'go forth and multiply' has reached the edge of the petri dish, as the mother of all reality checks is in the mail.