A good friend of mine once cynically told me that academia is largely driven by narcissism. He was only half-serious, and it was probably more an expression of

A good friend of mine once cynically told me that academia is largely driven by narcissism. He was only half-serious, and it was probably more an expression of his frustration with his work, but that quote always stuck with me, because it does help to explain why very talented people would stay in a gruesome, relatiely low-paying field. This I think also applies to a decent degree to entrepreneurship, politicians and ambitious career people at Fortune companies. So assuming this as a primary motivating factor, I'd say humanity is building towards whatever serves the glorification of the ego of its most successful narcissists. Phrased less cynically, we are all building our own little future, and humanity is the some of our constituent parts. To also give a more pragmatic answer to your question, I think we are progressing fastly towards a global society, with centralisation of both private sector and state power in the hands of a few elites. States are generally becoming more authoritarian, while companies are becoming ever larger and more complicated. We are already in a situation in which the largest companies can take on smaller countries in "asymmetric warfare", and I think this will just escalate with less borders and a potentially shrinking cake due to climate change and changing demographics.