As much as I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings on board here, I must say I'm pretty convinced a lot of devastating things this civilization is facing comes from religious organizations, which all in all function like a kind of mafia, protected from the inside by one another and by the states and systems all over the world. Here in Europe we have a history of religious wars, mindless blood-sheds, witch hunts, persecution of all kinds of people who are "different", and most of it was, actually, inspired and conducted by different religious organizations (In that manner the Bolsheviks could also be considered a kind of "religion", although they were atheists, 'cause they were more or less organized the same way, with strong and firm authority and nobody to question it). I'm not saying it to make anyone feel bad, I myself am a believer and I think faith of any kind can be a great force in life to take you forward, but I do and always will question any kind of authority, religious or else. I think it was Mark Twain who once said that the duty of any true patriot is to always criticize the government in order to make it more aware of it's failures. I fully agree with that. So yes, we all do have a bit of control over a small circle around us, but it's true that more and more of different things are aimed at taking that control off our hands, simply because the system, the governments, the banks, corporations and for centuries and maybe even more then others, the religious organizations, don't want to be questioned about anything they do and are capable of doing anything to keep us away from deciding about the directions the world is taking and to gain even more power. It has been happening for a long, long time and they want to keep it that way. But if we are aware of that we can confront it and keep our lives for ourselves and the ones we care about.