Is the conditioned mind destroying the world?

When you look at the world's chronic problems, e.g. continuous unrest in the Middle East, widespread poverty, senseless violence, etc., is this ultimately caused by the people being a slave to the conditioned mind? If people could learn to recognize that they are going through life on auto-pilot, simply repeating negative thoughts and behaviors over and over, perhaps we could break these cycles of negativity. The very survival of our world may depend on it. Thoughts?