[quote=@Tank O The Lake]
<Snipped quote by Etcetera>

Of course they can.  Anyone can.  Unfortunately, as with all sentient species, myself included, their own drive to "embetter" themselves is often a masked drive to engage in the same primal activity, just with a more advanced veneer.  Take the difference between, say, the Punic Wars, the first two World Wars, the Great Asian War of 2040, and World War III.  In all cases, they advanced drastically in a technological sense, but, in all cases, their fundamental cause was the collision of rival imperial interests.  Rome versus Carthage, France and Britain versus Germany and Austria, the United States versus China, I can go on for hours.

*He leans in.*

History does not repeat, but does rhyme.  Humans are human, and fall into the same... [i]primal[/i] traps.
[/quote]

*Nods*
And what if they could evade these traps? Ascend and become something greater than themselves? Every one of those events you listed share a cause beyond human ambition. Their striving isn't the source of their evil, but the bait that brings out the true evil inside of themselves.