[tame_deuces]

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Just because your intentions change easily or rapidly for reasons you don't fully understand (or anyone else, including psychologists) doesn't mean that our actions have "little to do with our goals and intentions".

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Well, there is a crux to it that you can't get past. For example as shown by the milgram experiments.

When asked people assume around 1% of other people would sadistically kill another person when told to do so. They also report that they would be abhorred by doing such an action.

In experimental settings around 66% of respondents will 'kill' (they are lead to believe it is atleast very harmful...the happy 70s when psychologists could do anything) another individual by increasing electroshock when told by an authority figure (not in any legal sense mind you) to do so.

The experiment is widely replicated across cultures & genders, and seems to be a generalized trait in any human populace.

What this means is that a near 60% of the living populace will when given authorative command perform actions which completely contradicts their own belief and whatever intention they have of their own regarding taking another person's life, and the authority does not have to be 'binding' (as in there hasn't even have to be any punishment whatsoever for not doing the action, nor a reward for not doing it), imagine the numbers with a binding - you could probably reach 80-90% easy.

Now imagine what the effect of this has on _any_ society?

Simply by rising to authority you can make people go against their own conviction and belief? You can even begin to question the principle that humans are always responsible for their own actions, when the numbers are this high we aren't talking own intent anymore - we are talking base psychological mechanisms to follow leadership regardless of personal belief - free will has nothing to do with it.