Can? Yes.

Will? Far from certain.

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Yes. I believe in humanity. We have done so much and the potential is unimaginably high.

Sadly, no. I think most people are apathetic about anything that does not immediately and directly impact themselves. Evil doesn’t need much more than that to thrive. Meanwhile, good requires active participation, selflessness, and continual vigilance to thrive.

Judging by the number of people who cannot literally lift a finger to make roads a safer place through the use of turn signals, I don’t hold much hope for humankind, as a whole, to put in the continual effort to quash “evil”.

Everytime I look to my left and right and the people surrounding me, I come to the conclusion that most people are nice and good. It doesn’t look that way if I’m reading the news, however. I think most people are in fact good and the media coverage is skewed. But we definitely need to defend our world from the assholes. It’s a constant struggle to prevail.

If it could, it would have by now.

I don’t mean to say this to sound like a pessimist (in fact, humans have been shown to be wonderful on an individual level), but I have low faith/regards to “humankind” as an entirety having their appreciable side endure. I define this similar to what Aristotle would say is the tripartite soul, where balance of thought is prioritized and people see passions for what they are, but in my experience, this couldn’t be further from how most people act. I’ve seen families and even cultures befallen because those contributing to their demise are so accustomed to each other and their own pre-existing customs that “due process” becomes a memory, perhaps a beforethought to a certain question. Even as one might remind us how crude and imperfect the human being is as a construct, the same people often choose to wear it, demonstrating that “human nature”, which is a term we use to excuse a myriad of things, is worse than any other form of neurodivergence I have come across, which in a poetic sense may be why my closest associates are outside the neurotypical realm. In such a dog eats dog world, I’d be regretfully glad to be eaten.

Obviously. I mean look around you. You think any of this would be possible if evil were more powerful? I’m talking the clothes, the lights, the shelter, the food, the relative safety, the infrastructure, the language, the libraries of entertainment and knowledge. How about the open source software we’re using right now to communicate, and the fantastic technology that’s running it?

It’s all evidence of the power of Good

Yes.

I’m an optimist, but I think so. The overall trend in humanity’s history is things are getting better. There are less wars, crime, hunger, disease, etc. There have been missteps and steps backwards of course, but overall humanity has been able to overcome major obstacles and I think that will continue.

It may be hard to see right now because there are so many crises we are facing, but it’s always been that way, people are just more informed now.

Good cannot flourish while greed does.

Capitalism cannot exist without extensive, institutionalized greed.

Nope.

For that to happen, the good ones would need to be bad enough to shoot the really bad ones in the face.

We should have been blowing up pipelines and sinking mega yachts for decades by now.

But this civilization is just too damn polite to do more than kindly ask the parasites among us to please stop killing us before they don’t have anything left to eat.

If things get better, if will be after we nearly go extinct.

And even after that, there will be some who take actions that risk the annihilation of us all, rather than have lass then others.

No. I believe we are likely witnessing the inevitable answer to the drake equation.

The same lizard-brain instincts that allowed our ancestors to survive (competition, resource hoarding, power centralisation) are fundamentally self destructive to that same society as it approaches post-scarcity capability.

In other words, when you have a society that evolved on selfishness and power imbalances, potential post-scarcity will always see those in power try to artificially create scarcity in order to remain in power.

I used to think we could rise above our baser selfishness when the time came. Now I don’t believe we will, nor that its even likely possible.

That lizard-brain instinct to protect what’s “yours” at the expense of everyone else is what got our civilization here in a resource poor world, and will cheerfully destroy it in order to maintain that scarcity for the sake of some.

A person needs to be strong to be kind.

… and all that variations of noblesse oblige principles out there.

with that out of the way:

If the most prevalent form of strength is money, like capitalism, then the way to earn it must be through greed.

…the good in humankind…

with greed, no. excessive greed is not good.

… can prevail

especially the prevail part. There’s a few notably strong people not swayed by greed, but it can only go that far. Greed is a really strong force for both incentive and corruption.

It’s possible, but I’m afraid we may go through a period of fascist factions completely taking over several first world countries and trying to stomp that out first