Laws, Social Norms, and Morality Are Designed to Hide the War of Preferences

Societies deny and cover the hidden war of preferences and hide the conflicts of wills. Mass denial engenders more harmony and empathy in the society. Such denial used to create more harmony in the past (for instance when Christianity was more dominant), but as capitalism and materialism prevailed, it became harder to encourage empathy among competitors in a so-called free market. Denying the war of preferences gives advantage to those who are free from morality and conscience. They can gain advantages by cheating and secretly violating the laws, norms, and moral codes. That's why most successful politicians are psychopaths who have no sense of guilt or conscience. They gain their preferences of power and wealth by unethical means. If every member of society was as free as they are from social norms and morality, chaos and fierce competition would have ensued. Morality and social norms are chains that bring harmony and provide systematic advantages for the group that establish those rules. Throughout history, different groups established and controlled those rules. For instance, religious leaders such as Popes had this role when the church ruled the Europe in the Middle Ages. After industrialization, those who controlled mass media and those who controlled legislative system (the lobbyists and frontman of capitalists) controlled laws, social norms, and morality.

Religions and Mass Depression

Nobody knows what lies beyond death (and what happens to consciousness after death). Nobody has the needed capacity and tools to fully understand what God and the whole universe are. We live in an ocean of uncertainty. Science provides minuscule certainty through the use of experiments and our experiences. Science is a small candle in the dark, and a great portion of unknown is left to be filled up with our imagination. Most religions have tried to fill up the unknown and uncertainty with some comforting scenarios. Religions have been perfecting their stories for thousands of years. Many brilliant religious thinkers have hidden contradictions and flaws of those stories (and scenarios of future). However, the changes in our lifestyle in the recent centuries have been so quick and so dramatic that most religions fell behind in updating their justifications.
One root of mass depression is that the scenarios of future proposed by existing religions are not beautiful, comfortable, and believable as they were once. The modern society needs more believable and more exciting scenarios of future. People’s imagination is expanding so quickly that soon, nothing short of becoming a god would satisfy them. The everyday reality has become so mundane, repugnant, and intolerable that people prefer to escape to virtual realities and fantasy. Capitalism has become a religion. An inefficient religion that creates beautiful, but short-lived, reality. A religion that denies death, and when its contradictions emerge, it turns into nihilism.

The God Construct

The concept of God is a challenge for the limits of your imagination. The idea of god is a W2 construction, and like any W2 construction, it gives rise to an experience and feeling. Religions introduce a great, complex, and beautiful god. However, because of the need for control and expediency, they create a god with contradictory characteristics.
Believing in such an infinite concept and thinking about it create a spiritual experience. Many religions count such an experience as a proof of their legitimacy.
But any sublime, magnificent, and infinite W2 concept can create an impressive W3 experience. That's why followers of different religions have the same adherence to their own God.
In fact, it is the magic of X in action. A beautiful and grand W2 composition gives rise to an awe-inspiring reality and experience.
The concept of god is your construct. You create your own God. You imagine a god with certain attributes, and then you feel this W2 composition. The more imaginative and creative you are, the greatest your God would be, and consequently, the greater your spiritual experience would be. The concept of god evolves throughout history. In the past centuries, many other constructs have become more powerful than the concept of god. For instance, having money and being extremely wealthy has stolen the limelight from the concept of god wherever capitalism rules. However, the concept of money dwarfed the concept of god without providing such transcendental spiritual experiences.