We're already outside of the envelope that I envisioned as a kid for the era we are living in and the departure gets more extreme with every year that passes.
But we seem to have been unable to outrun wars, greed and outright evil. Those you can definitely count on for the longer term unless we start to actively work against them.
I think a big part of the problem is that we keep on creating structures where malicious individuals have a disproportionally high chance to end up with their grubby little tentacles on the levers of power.
You'd think WWII would teach us that lesson forever but for some strange reason we are immune to absorbing this and we have made that same mistake at least another few 100 times since then. And one of these days one of those idiots is going to kill us all. And for some reason it is always men.
Yeah, sometime someone will do somethind stupid enough to send everything to hell. So far so, simce WW2 that is, we as humanity managed to prevent this. Let's hope we stay that happy!
No we actually did not manage to prevent it. We almost caused it but sheer luck in several cases derailed Armageddon. It could have just as easily happened, and probably more than just as easily (figure about 60:40 with us living in the '40' branch of the multiverse). Pretty good odds though. But over the longer term: not such good odds.
But we seem to have been unable to outrun wars, greed and outright evil. Those you can definitely count on for the longer term unless we start to actively work against them.