You cut to the heart of the matter. I agree that a grand reimaging seems necessary. We might be motivated all the more to do so, though, if we begin to suspect that we were conned into this dead end all along or from the outset. Blaming the elites won't fix anything, but it should make us wary about trusting systems that are good mainly for them.

I'm not sure equilibrium should be our goal, though. Or rather, I don't think behaviourally modern, culturally awakened people as opposed to animals can actually prefer to be in equilibrium with nature. We're motivated by our opposition to nature. Yes, the hunter-gatherers were in equilibrium with nature for millions of years, but their animistic mentality must have been very different from ours.