How to Explain Certain Things in Our World

The Bible's view of the spiritual realities is such that it's a way of thinking about our own personal lives, but also our corporate lives as a society. So what Paul's saying here is that there is a spirit. There is a non-physical being who's apparently influencing individual humans to exploit our sinfulness and selfishness in order to make a horrible mess. This is right back to what all the imagery in the story of the Garden of Eden is about: this presence of this mysterious, strange, evil being trying to exploit human selfishness to make a terrible mess.