Given all of events going on in the world today:
The good news is, it seems to me, that mankind is going through a major mental evolution. That is the noosphere may be going through a phase transition that could lead to much more sapience expressed in the general population. For me the best evidence for this is the rapid adoption of a new zeitgeist surrounding not just Black Lives Matter but the whole issue of racism becoming visible and, for me at least, life altering. I never considered myself as racist (probably most people don't) but over the last month I have learned so much about the subject and have been moved to empathy with the pain that Blacks have experienced in this country - a subject not taught in school and with which I never came in contact directly. I think I understand a lot more now. And judging by the diversity of people marching together around the world for social justice, it looks like this feeling is widespread.
The bad news is that all phase transitions are preceded by chaos and major dissolution of all the old connections. Just throw a dart at the front page of your favorite newspaper. You will have pinpointed one such dissolution in progress. Some dissolutions are good, but can still have disruptive effects. Look at what is happening to the economy based on capitalism and profit maximization. Do you know why the administrations (national and local) are so eager to get people back to work in the middle of a pandemic? They are desperate to save business as usual - capitalism and the rich getting richer. But I'm not worried about the poor rich folks. The real worry is all of those who are out of work as a result. And the breaking of basic services like the production of food and its supply chain breakdown. Things are likely to get very chaotic. In the end, I wouldn't be surprised if more people die due to the knock-on effects of the economy shut-down as of COVID-19 itself.
But the old social order and its economic (dysfunctional) system isn't ever coming back in its pre-pandemic form. Many other people are being vocal questioning what we were doing in the name of materialistic, consumerist lifestyles, which is a driving force that propels capitalism. This pandemic lock-down has given many people time to think about things like how horribly un-resilient our system was given the drive to maximize profits. I don't think we have yet seen the full extent of disruption to our globalized and "optimized" economic system.
To leave you with some "hopium", I have been reading Daniel Christian Wahl's "Designing Regenerative Cultures" in which he espouses a systems approach to designing our society in a way that it cooperates with the rest of the natural world and supports it (thereby receiving support in return). Permaculture plays heavily in his formula for regenerative cultures. Many of his concepts are similar to mine except that he thinks that we humans can consciously transition to this state of affairs (mostly by giving up our extravagant lifestyles) and finding truly green technologies (e.g. biomimitic solar collectors as opposed to silicon-based) to support a "reasonable" lifestyle for everyone. I, on the other hand, am pretty convinced that there will be a major crash of civilization and a reset of the evolution of some kind of human social system that could achieve his (and my) end goals, but by different pathways. Perhaps the phase transition of the noosphere could provide an ultimate solution to some kind of future for humankind on this planet in the long run. The short run, maybe not so much.
As always, I hope he's right and I'm wrong. But just in case...