Idea sketch: Multiple conflicting objectives.

Warning; another hurried jotting, subject to editing for reasons of reason, coherence and legibility.

"The objective" is not one thing, but a range of things along the continuum between minimal objective and optimal objective:

Optimal = proliferation and security of genetic material

Minimal = don't die.

How achieved is dictated by the macramé knottiness of culture and circumstance which dictate multiple conflicting objectives along this continuum.

A major conundrum: The need to be selfish vs the need to perceive one's self as worthy. Ties to "chosen people/special one" beliefs by way of justification/absolution. That conflict is the amniotic fluid in which embryonic hypocrisy develops.

More overt forms of unreason: To care more, to strive more, to be more certain, to be more avid, to be more fanatical - these are beneficial in finding meaning behind the justification.To realise one is wrong is catastrophic to confidence and motivation, so believing absolutely in something that cannot be disproven is optimal, if, by virtue of being empirically unprovable, literally crazy.

Early, early (early) philosophers anywhen looking for the unifying theory of everything, concepts that cover phenomena from disease to weather are tied to god-theory.

Aside: If it did play out like this, I wonder how long, on average, it took before the developers of god-theory realised what a powerful human-manipulation tool it could be?