We Would Like To Think Were Human....

After the usual morning over coffee, before the work day starts chat with the boss I started to ponder us humans.  We are not really that far up the ladder of civilization.  We humans are capable of the most horrid thing's imaginable, members of the human race can murder one another for thrills. We are capable of all sorts of cruelty on lesser animals of the world.  We can be greedy, self indulgent and totally useless to the rest of humanity.  We humans will destroy our habitat, poison our water and turn fresh air into a poisonous gas.
After all that I needed to stop and try to think how to make it better before it gets any worse, and maybe even correct some of it.  I started to think about when a lot of that sort of stuff started to happen.  Lot's of folks will always talk about 'The good ol' days'.  Ok, so when were those proverbial 'Good ol' days."?  Not sure if you can consider the industrial revolution the good ol' days.  That was the beginning of some terrible pollution of water, land and air.  Lets go back another hundred years.  Not then either, diseases that could not be cured, slavery and all sorts of problems of that time.
Like a lot of folk I really do think now are the good ol' days.  Only problem I can see with now is two things.  First off there are just too damn many people competing for a limited amount of resources.  Water being a prime example.  Second is our cradle to grave welfare thinking.  I'm really not sure how to solve number one without trying to control individual freedom (the most important thing a human can have).  The second, well just talk to any liberal.  There is a line of thinking that says everyone should be given everything they need to feel worthwhile, all the things a human needs to feel self worth and to contribute to not only themselves but to humanity in general.  Has that ever worked?  Or, has that just made it worse?
I'm starting to write myself into fits thinking.  So, I'm going to take a breather on this one and mull it all over for awhile.  If anyone has anything they can contribute to my thought pool feel welcome.  After awhile I might have more on this but for right now I'm in the 'Ant and the Grasshopper' camp.