You are forgetting a very important thing: the ever-increasing power of misplaced technology - once upon a time ability for damage equaled to a rock or a stick, today...

The "great responsibility" that should have accompanied the "great power" is dwarfed. Wisdom should needingly¹ increase more than power - of course this is not how things go.

(¹I cannot find the term for the modality: not "deontically", not "absiologically"... The idea is "X, or you are in trouble".)

So, "in the times of yore, civilization was falling apart". Today, it is with boosted damages.