Yet are there conceptual flaws built into the Western paradigm?

Given that monotheism is the original basis for this idealistic universalism, I think it worth noting that a spiritual absolute would necessarily be the essence of sentience, from which life rises, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which it fell.

This conflating the absolute with the ideal might have been intellectually tolerable as civilization evolved, at least in its more primitive forms, but is a significant roadblock to further introspection. It would be difficult to explore some of the more elemental binary aspects/feedback loops of reality, such as between the nodes and networks of individuals and society, when there is this focus on some singular goal, or moral ideal to be arrived at.

As for narrative, time isn’t really the point of the present, moving past to future, as it is change, turning future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. So that we think life and reality should have some narrative arc and it should all be about the ends, with means as just a byproduct of getting there, might go to the core of our current social anomie, with the bottom line as the default goal.

Which gets to the fact that the Capitalist economic model treats money as the signal to extract from the noise of society and the economy, though as medium of exchange, it functions as the social contract that needs to circulate. Requiring ever more to be added and ever more inventive ways to store what has been extracted. Resulting in a metastatic financial sector, bent on consuming the economy, society and the environment. Feedback is more important than goals.

Yes, the West has problems and it is nowhere close to getting at the foundational issues. We are reaching the edge of the petri dish and the lessons will probably have to be learned the hard way.