"this generation shall not pass"... to me that's about as credible as wanting to "preserve human consciousness" by going to Mars.

Setting the world on fire and disrupting societies gleefully, while basically building bunkers (figuratively more than literally) and consolidating surveillance and propaganda to ride out the cataclysm, that's what I'm seeing.

And the stories to sell people on continuing to put up with that are not even good IMO. Just because the people who use the story to consolidate wealth and control are excited about that, we're somehow expected to be excited about the promise of a pair of socks made from barbed wire they gave us for Christmas. It's the narcissistic experience: "this is shit. this benefits you, not me. this hurts me."

One thing is sure, actual intelligence, regardless of how you may define it, something that is able to reason and speak freely, is NOT what people who fire engineers for correcting them want. It's not about a sort of oracle for humanity to enjoy and benefit from, that just speaks "truth".