I hope they are: The next big, big war may mean a nuclear weapon, may well mean more than one. Maybe humanity needs that, a tragedy that will force us to acknowledge the error of our ways and—perhaps—to repent. But I don’t think so. I think we have it in us to get it right, and I think we’re just procrastinating—and definitely a little more scared of each other than we ought to be. I also think that none or very few of us are always courageous enough to admit how often we’re wrong. And I think the more ways we can figure out to acknowledge that to each other, the better and better off we’re going to be.

But I also think the people who say war is going to go on and on are wrong. I just can’t believe we’re going to be stuck in this place forever. I think humanity is going to grow up. I think as a conscious species we are much younger and much more overconfident than we recognize. And I think the same way most kids eventually grow up and learn that talking and thinking are generally preferable in every sense over fighting and being stupid, we too are eventually going to get our shit together.

No two wars have been the same; all of the great wars have been special in some way—generally in the sense of at least one major new artifact being introduced for purposes of killing larger and larger numbers of people. But we seem to have come to the end of that road, practically speaking. I hope we can all agree that our strongest people-killing technology is strong enough as it currently stands.

Before the invention of atomic weapons, you could only kill so many people at once. Before atomic weapons, it was entirely possible to kill a bunch of people you would probably never be friends with. But when you start killing people in the hundreds of thousands, then unless you are the sort of person who has no friends at all, you end up killing someone you could have been friends with. You just couldn’t kill that many people without killing someone of your ethnicity, of your religion, of your mindset; someone who sees the world the way you do enough that you would like to sit down and drink coffee or water or wine with them. You would likely kill many such people, in fact. And if the people don’t matter to you, there are cats, dogs, parakeets, and other beasts to think of.

So we have reached our limit as far as deadly violence goes. We have not by far, however, exhausted our options for getting our point across without the killing. There are more tasers out there and business negotiations going on than ever before.

I think we are going to grow up before we hurt ourselves too badly. I believe Someone is watching out for us like a good parent—regardless of whether Someone is or not, it behooves me to act as if Someone were. It would behoove us all, I suspect, and mostly I wish I were better at it (and I always wish other people were better at it). Our potential only deepens when we learn to associate respectfully with ourselves and one another, and I think the history ahead of us is richer with opportunity than most of us can really imagine.