Adaptability and Fantasy Land

Some people claim the ancient egyptians invented the concept of a "soul", that is, the verbal "I" of a person is a thing that's dissociated from their body, thus their kings built pyramids and had elaborate funerary rites to make sure the "soul" was wealthy in the parallel dimension where souls "live" after death. I doubt that the Egyptians invented the concept, but maybe they were "first" to turn it into a giant scam industry.

The "soul" concept today is possibly somewhat different than in ancient egypt. Now people live in "The Matrix" essentially. The "I" is dissociated mainly from the natural world, and the average person lives in the world of "stuff", not living things, but dead things like houses and cars and tech.

The overall belief of the society is the "I" will escape the limits of the natural world and live forever. The people feed their time and energy to the stuff world to try to create a parallel dimension where that will actually happen. That concept: "The New Jerusalem" is depicted in the TV show "The 100" in the later seasons in "the city of light".

The eastern philosophical concept is the "soul" eventually escapes from the material world, which is basically just hell or a bunch of constant "tests", which seems like some other bullshit.

This habitual dissociation is pretty harmful to many individuals; it prevents them from making basic assessments about their life situation or correcting course, or evaluating really basic choices, like financial choices, which makes their material life miserable or at minimum keeps them running forever on the treadmill.