I agree, but I also think any approach which fails to take into account the very human need to believe in something greater than oneself is doomed to failure. I'm not saying it has to be a deity, but papering over the cracks with a purely scientific and materialist view won't succeed, if it did then humanism would be a much more potent movement than it is.

I think the process of belief in it's own right actually has a lot of potential as a force for good, you only have to know a little about currency markets, the placebo effect and the entire field of marketing to know how much collective belief can affect the world. A philosophy that our personal decisions impact the "collective unconscious" (I know I misuse this term but it's the closest term I have for what I'm attempting to describe) and as such we have an individual responsibility to act ethically for the sake of those around you (remember people largely don't care about the impact on greater humanity, just those around them) might have some merit. It's essentially invoking a placebo effect on a grand scale, if enough people believe that acting unethically directly causes some kind of "spiritual" harm that there's a good chance it will actually manifest in enough people to make it believable. Ever felt literally "sick to your stomach" after doing something you shouldn't? That's what I'm going for. It could be sold in the opposite direction too, the idea ethical acts directly benefit those around you through the same mechanism.

All we need is something plausible to the majority of people (who mostly know barely any science at all) to link to this code of ethics to direct personal consequences and we have a new bulwark against toxic consumerism.