It has been observed (In both controlled laboratory & “field” experiments) that when kept at a low enough psychic temperature, through a subtle but all pervasive anxiety & persistent environmental stress, it will not cook the brain, or affect it's color, flavor or, for the few it may concern, nutritional value but only gently remove potential cognitive pathogens that could create effective maladjustment which would precipitate, for who it would effect, what is essentially a food shortage. Some would say this procedure is relatively non-invasive & anti-traumatic, but it is closer to the accumulated micro-fractures on a professional boxers skull than a topical antibiotic.
Imagine, for example, a field of cows proclaiming to rule the earth because them & their kin have followed the anthropocentrically managed rituals of the domestic contract. If raw survival was the highest objective, then surely we are each of us all lords of the art for a time, but if the end is always the same (& it is always today, whatever day it arrives), then might we stand to aim a little higher?
Alas, hidden things fight to make themselves evident, and what is endogenous will present itself in the higher layers, though not as easily determined as the physiognomists might wish to believe. Their art is severely imperfect, but their intuition that little can truly be hidden for long is correct, despite the human proclivity & consequent expertise for & in self-deception. Once the injury has taken hold, it is inevitably revealed through the manifestation of self-medication; a hit dog hollers, as they say. There is not yet a balm as effective, to my knowledge, for the relief of existential suffering as the ritual.
Rituals point towards the existence of something hidden, like the Delphic Oracle burning laurel before sitting atop her tripod; we are trying to tell ourselves something that we already know: the prophecy comes from within the Oracle. Yet, the noise floor has been raised to a level that does not permit the most important signals to get across. This is completely intentional. The colloquial voice(s) of God is/are extremely convincing &, if history can be believed, potentially catastrophic to what some consider the “status quo”, or to others simply “dinner time”. Anything with uniform properties can be considered a substance, & any substance can be abused therefore an examination of the rituals we adhere to, & a making explicit of things hidden (at a minimum quietly inside your own mind) to the best of your ability may, with luck, turn over a stone that hides a silent empire squirming in the mud of your subconscious.
Eggs are made to be broken anyway.