Life is extremely difficult.
To withstand this difficulty, it helps to have something fundamental to rely on (rather than shallow platitudes).
This requires a notion of good (and thus "better" and "worse"), forcing us to trade equality for reality.
Such inequality might seem unfair, but once we acknowledge the brutality of the world (and that of ourselves), the need becomes obvious.
This gives us something to aim at.
Then, to prevent the metabolically expensive act of solving everything from first principles, we can build structures to consolidate our learnings (both superficial and deep).
As the world becomes more leveraged, our choice of superficial structure(s) has a huge effect on our material outcomes.
But by placing the moral necessity of structure above material niceties of any given structure, we can avoid decision paralysis.
It's easy to confuse morality with weakness, but there's nothing virtuous about being pathetic.
Solving this problem requires us to acknowledge (and integrate) our own capacity for aggression, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. Only then can we engage in competent, forthright dialogue to help renew the structures we inhabit.
Acting this out requires sacrifice, in line with our value systems.
This sacrifice only makes sense if we believe the future could be better than the present. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but certainly for those who come next.
Pessimism will always tempt us.
It'll tell us to shirk responsibility, and to tear others down (so that we look better in comparison).
It'll claim that progress is finite, and competence is dangerous, and that the only moral option is to lay down and die.
But we can decide, a priori, to refuse.
And nobody can take that from us.