The long sleep of change is upon us; can humanity make the necessary adaptations to survive and thrive in a future on this finite planet? If you need reason to hope, then you lose; the truth is, you need hope to find the reasons to survive. Crowded and resource-scarce environments bring out the worst in homo sapiens, it seems, and that explains a lot of what's gone wrong in the ages of civilization.What about governments in the so-called free world, leading us into tyranny. Is there anything we can do, in time, to ward off the impending dictatorships in the western world? If courage doesn't come when we need it, then we don't have it. I say that we do have the courage, but there's something missing still....Science has become the closest thing we have to a shared conceptual language, and it explains quite well what is going wrong in this world within individuals and societies. Simply, we are designed by evolution to become ineffective in survival when our population reaches critical pressures: That means violence, warfare, and authoritarianism. That's not to say that authoritarian ways of living are adaptive - on the contrary, unremitting strong authority would help finish off freedom, and perhaps humanity itself.We have to exert the remarkable human qualities of reflection, introspection and self-control if we are to change, one by one, into gentler, more patient, and more intelligent individuals and societies.I don't have all the answers in this short essay, but I point to how our thinking needs to change if we are to hold onto lady liberty, and avoid falling over the precipice into species extinction. I hope, therefore there is hope for all.