Open Question: How can you tell the difference between truth/life and prosperity, and falseness/lies/evil?

I don't mean how do you tell the difference between the boogeyman and the holy man upstairs or something obvious, but how can you tell what life decisions you make, what advice you follow, what career path you take, the financial decisions you make, the way you act, your morals, what you stand for...how can you tell if that ultimately is for your best, and leads to "truth" and life and prosperity and will bring you happiness and success, over...things that are false, lies, "evil" in a loose sense, and things that will generally just take away from you and not really lead you anywhere really?It's hard because nowadays everyone seems to be living for the moment, are living in lies, dreams, delusions, they all think theyre the next american idol, or have these "ya never know i might be rich and famous someday" attitudes, selfish, just all sorts of wrongness, spend now worry later,..listen to pop icons, have s9x whenever you want...morals are for dorks....I mean, many people live and breathe the paragraph above and still succeed in life somehow or what not, but..well...I guess to each their own.But how can we really tell the difference between what's good and what's evil...in a world that's more or less....grey. Meaning it's very hard to figure out whats good from bad in our society today.what appears to be good like, looking good, presentable, successful, having a strong business image, etc, might be the path to your demise,...in a sense,....by u neverk now, making you more lonely, more busy, ruining your health...see what I'm getting at? How life's subtle choices can lead to tomorrow's heartaches.So how do we rest assured at all times that we're on the right path and that we're really doing the right thing, as opposed to things which will ultimately fail us?I've just chosen alot of paths that lead to despair, mistakes, falseness, and all sorts of evil stuff. I'm sick of it and I want to change, but it's hard when the world around us is basically crumbling as we speak. Thanks to the evil ones that is. The evil ones that think they're so smart, that want money/power, and ultimately....because of their devotion to falseness/lies/evil....they and the poeple they come into contact with and influence ..it all trickles down and eventually affects the world as a whole. that's my understanding.So being that we live in such a world, where even good intentioned people can underneath that cloak be deceitful "wrongdoers,"...how can we be guided the right way?Where do we turn? How do we KNOW..if it's good or bad?It's hard to tell.Any advice is appreciated both spiritual/religious ANd atheist.And please try to type more than a few sentences, because I took the time to type thoroughly and I'd at least respect a more thought-out answer.For example, even innocent enough things like sex8al urges. Let's say you decide when you're young to take care of them, you watch some porn, then you get older, you might decide, HEY this feels good, it takes care of a biological problem, and you think its a good thing,but then who knows, it may make your attitudes towards sex very lenient and expose you to 1000000 varieties of it, then you might waste money on countless of porn/s9x items, and go out there and engage in it...now not saying thats bad or good,..the values are different to us all but....is it ULTIMATELY for our best good? in the long run? all that time could have been spent lets say raising money to help the homeless or whatever, but you chose to lets say, self-indulge, and then justify that by, "hey i deserve it" or whatever.But that's just one example. then we have gambling, then we have buying lotto tickets week by week, then shopping.."oh i deserve that sweater." it goes ON and ON..so how can u tell good vs bad?