Yeah my wife feels the same way as you do Teresa.
Sometimes it's hard to be hopeful for the future and to be compassionate towards the human race, when we see all the horrible things that humans do.

I just hope that this next era of humanity will be the era of ethics, the era in which we will realize that a compassionate reason IS a valid reason to do things.

I truly believe that all those who whine about how they want world peace need to be asked HOW? (exactly do you plan to GET world peace.
The first step is to stop OUR own war against the other species of this world and the planet that nurtures us.

and only then will we have any hope for world peace among humans.
I am hopeful that we will see this world in our lifetimes, that it will be the world of our grandchildren, a peaceful vegan world. :-)

my wife disagrees and hopes like you for some catastrophic event :-) and feels that it is the only way that it will get better because too much of humanity is selfish and cruel.

We are probably not too far off from that event. Some combination of War, Famine, Pestilence and Death will smite most of us down. When species overpopulate, their population inevitably crashes. We are not immune to the laws of nature. We may not all die, though. A relatively small number of humans may survive. These survivors will repopulate the human species. Depending on who survives, the next wave of humans may differ genetically from the current population (the bottleneck effect).