Why all this 'practical polytheism', gods/Higher Powers vs idols/Lower Powers stuff?

If you have read any of my recent postings, you've seen that I have been making a lot of use of the idea that people are 'practical polytheists', worshiping multiple gods or Higher Powers and idols or Lower Powers. Among the Higher Powers people worship are God, community, justice, love... and among the Lower Powers/idols one could find money, power, praise, possessions.... Why do I find this approach useful, rather than just sticking with virtues and vices or character assets and character defects?

Let's take Pride as an example. In the classic definition, Pride involves viewing the self as the highest good, all other people as instruments to be used or prey to be exploited, and any God or Higher Power as either irrelevant or nonexistent. The self lives in the center of an imaginary universe.  Humility, in contrast, involves viewing oneself as one flawed individual among many, as playing a small role in a universe within which one can act but over which one has no power, and as serving goods much greater than oneself.

So Pride is obviously a vice and Humility is obviously a virtue, right?  This is where the gods vs. idols perspective comes in, because it depends on what you worship and what you renounce.  Virtues and vices are determined by values.  That which brings you closer to what you value is, for you, a virtue; that which moves you away from what you value is, for you, a vice.  If we simply accept the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues (three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Love and four cardinal virtues, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice) as givens, without thinking about why we want to accept them and where we want them to bring us we will fall into a dogmatic and ultimately weak spirituality and recovery.

So, is Pride a vice?  Talk to a few Wall Street Bond Traders.  Worshipers of Power and Money, two of their greatest gods, they view Pride as one of the highest virtues and Humility as a vice, a fatal weakness.  On the other hand, talk to some Trappist monks, for whom money and power are idols.  For them Pride is the fundamental vice and Humility one of the greatest virtues.

The goal, that which we worship, separates the virtues from the vices.  We must worship and work toward our Higher Powers and renounce our idols.