Absolutely agree. And yet, we are programmable. We acquire and cultivate taste and even “instinctive” reactions. In my lifetime, cigarette smoke has gone from cool to ghastly in most people’s perception. Cars are going the same way. Yuval Harari was on to something when he wrote, in Sapiens, that the real battlefield is for deciding what we want to want.
Benedictine monasteries are no utopias. With small numbers of people cooped in for the very long run, they must experience terrible tensions. But they seem to have found, in the Rule, an equilibrium-ish way to interact, that allows them to do incredible feats. Some of these feats manifest in the economic domain. A Benedictine abbot once told me “We tend to get prosperous, because monks work hard”. And they work hard because work is part of their spiritual quest, which is the defining aspect of their entire lives. Benedictine monks will tend the garden, or brew beer (here in Belgium) with the same dedication of a professional athlete to training and competitions. No lay worker, paid in mere money, can get close to that level of motivation.
Here is my account of that discussion, that inspired much of the Covenant.