Excellent response. Thank you. Check the we are evolving link in the OP for some possible encouragement about where we might be heading.

I think you touched on a lot of the things I mentioned in my post Tribalism: Our Shared Enemy. This tribalistic nature we have causes so many problems. Can our neural plasticity allow us to move beyond our defaults? Can we improve faster than our "natural selection" evolution allows for? I'm hopeful.

we had just as many wars when kings rode into battle at the HEAD of their armies.

According to Steven Pinker's work, we had far more wars, actually. The world is becoming significantly more peaceful.