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This has been a troubling and dark contemplation for me for some time now. First, there are a few assumptions that are always taken for granted--that man necessarily evolves better morality and foresight over time. There is no indicator that is not on a genetic timescale. There is no indicator that morality and foresight are consistent survival traits, compared to, say, tireless cunning. Man is a cunning beast, not an intellectual. Being surrounded by smart people as we are in this forum, and, statistically, in our real lives makes it easy to forget how generally brutish and coldly simple the human mind is.
Morality and foresight (or whatever the communal understanding is of the traits of a wholly successful civilization) are high-level mental decisions--the last part of the brain to be consulted, the part of the brain to be addressed after instinct brings no answers. We are instinctive animals with less than 5% DNA differentation from chimpanzees. We have our Shakespeares and Einsteins, but we also have our Ed Geins and Hillside Stranglers.
Anyway, I'm not really sober at the moment, so there's probably a hole or two in my logic. The short version of my opinion is that I am not optimistic about long-term viability. Granted, this sentiment is biased towards personal experience, but I think the things I've done, read, watched and listened to and have had done to me, both good and bad, are sufficiently generalizeable.
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"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine
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