Interesting you should mention monkey brains, because my monkey brain also recoils at this optimism when it understands that most brains are still monkey brains, and I don't trust monkeys that create an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction which can totally wipe out all trace of the things you are rightly passionate about. The evidence is scarce that other than the obvious technological progress there has been any other progress but even that being so, I'm cautiously optimistic that the battle between monkey mind and enlightened mind will eventually be won by the latter rather than monkeys collectively going the way of the dinosaurs.
>I am probably stealing from people cleverer than i whom I cannot remember to reference or am too dumb to reference
Don't remember which book it was, but I remember reading a book where there was a phrase on a page before the first chapter, "All creativity is subconscious plagiarism" :-) Of course this generality can be logically refuted but it's probably something we all do to a degree.