There’s also a facet of strict benthamite utilitarianism that falls into the trap of accepting reified societal norms as being objective reality - for instance, the core idea that pain and suffering are bad.
On an individual level, I would hold that they are the whetstones that sharpen the soul - through crushing trauma we grow, and find new meaning, and experience “goods” in our existence hitherto unobserved or unappreciated for their nature.
In a societal level, they are an essential facet of empathy, and the ability to build cohesive societies.
There’s a commonality in popular philosophies in that they attempt to provide a universal framework, an imperative system of being - yet they almost inevitably lean on inherited dispositions and concepts with only selective examination of their foundations. This results in a tendency to either say that everything matters, or nothing matters. It’s hard for me to see much of a distinction between much of the large schools of philosophy and religion.
Like with so many things, the truth, if indeed there is such a thing, lies in a murky middle ground, and is in the eye of the beholder.
I suppose baudrillard, to my mind, has come the closest to explaining where we are, without attempting to systemise a way of being.
Anyway. This kind of thing has happened, happens, and will happen, as long as there are humans to have ideas, and language to promulgate them. Fatalistic, perhaps, but manuscripts don’t burn - they just metastasise.