But we aren't the middle children of history. I'd argue that we are amongst the first few generations where humans have become too powerful for their own good.

But we aren't the middle children of history. I'd argue that we are amongst the first few generations where humans have become too powerful for their own good. That era started with the nuclear bomb when we first had the ability to destroy ourselves. Thankfully very small groups of people have ever had to take responsibility for that and they've mostly managed to do okay so far. However now with mass industrialization and the spectre of climate change we've reached a point where every single human is responsible for our collective future. We have to fight our evolutionary and historical instincts to preserve the planet for ourselves and all other life. So there is a crisis upon us, it may be different in nature to the ones before but its certainly no less challenging. For a far better argued view on this I would recommend "The precipice" by Toby Or