“I think we are an outfit headed for extinction”
(So said Hemingway on seeing fake books in his fancy hotel room.)
Of course we are. We always are. We're always headed down for the count. It's unsustainable. We corrupt our best stuff, don't take good enough care of each other, ignore the truth, make short-term decisions and generally screw it up.
But even though we're headed for extinction, or perhaps precisely because we are, that doesn't mean we can't do our best. It doesn't mean we can't set an example, raise the bar and try mightily to do the work that we're capable of.
It might not work. But at least we tried.