reaction isn't action - that is, it isn't truly creative.
Individual advances turn into social change when enough of them occur.
Art is a framework, a kind of living trellis, on which public dreaming can shape itself.
Powerful people get away with things. That's one way to demonstrate their difference from the rest of us.
Mythology is like gravity, inconvenient at times, but necessary for cohesion.
Creeds and causal systems have argued with each other for millennia, and even so we and our ancestors have managed to live in a world of differing opinions. Philosophical disputes don't often affect the price of fish or wine.