I doubt that my final thoughts before I shuffle off this mortal coil will be of the morality or technical prowess of mankind but if they were, I think I would be optimistic.

There will always be those who know less and don't care that they know less, but they are fewer now than a hundred years ago and they know more now than they did then.

Mankind is certainly a work in progress but I tend to think that our moral progress has been measurable if not equal to our technical advancement.

For all the pessimism and self hatred we see, it is worth noticing that we have kept the nuclear genie in the bottle for nearly 70 years. Would the worlds of Napoleon or Genghis Khan been able to say the same. I doubt the fear of mutual destruction would have fazed either of them. Wars of conquest are things of the past. Slavery is illegal everywhere and while racial prejudice exists, at least the principle of equality is generally accepted as a matter of policy. All this and much more in a hundred years.

Maybe global warming will end us. I doubt it but neither Bowser or I will live to see how it turns out. We can both die with the certainty that we were right.

As long as we continue to overpopulate, life on Earth will become more and more volatile regardless of our moral progress. All the more reason that, as a species, we need to learn all that we can about everything.

Mankind does not deserve extinction for our misdeeds but our civilization will crumble if we don't get off of this rock and sooner or later some ELE outside our control will take us out.