The cyclic nature of man....

I teach history to kids in the tenth grade. I rarely use textbooks but instead rely on material such as personal narratives, articles written on perspectives of catastrophic or spectacular events, collective testimonials, and the vast accumulated knowledge I have amassed through my travels, my readings, my experiences etc. I have read hundreds, if not thousands of books, on the fallibility of man as manifested from individual acts (from Eugene Debbs to Peter the Great) to organized genocides (Pol Pot, Rwanda, etc) and pass the knowledge onto my kids, desperately trying to inject a new understanding of what man really is. I organized a principle of the cyclic nature of human history, and the implications about said human nature that it entails. Some of these points have been made by philosophers before--none of them I would imagine are completely new. However, I am trying to interlock them into a unified theory.

1. Man is inherently petty and selfish individually, usually too much so to be very seriously good or evil on a grand scale; however, groups of human beings are far more likely to unite for the purpose of furthering their baser, more evil qualities than their virtues, especially if said group is a organization with great influence on the world, such as a government or an organized Church (Please note that I said organized _church_, nor organized _religion_. There is a difference.) This last phenomenon is due to my next point.
2. The most potent corrupting influence known to man is the ego which is a direct result of any kind of power, especially governmental power.
3. Extreme distinction of conditions between the various classes of a society is a goal, pursued actively if often unconsciously, of civilized societies. The premise involved is that to perpetuate the hardships of the downtrodden is to also perpetuate their ignorance and distract them from any interest in government, prevent them from taking any degree of power and control from the rich and powerful. By definition, it is the rich and powerful that truly make the decisions on the progress of their society, and in their minds it is preferable that millions should starve than that they should lose any degree of their power.
4. Most evil acts on a truly grand scale are done by leaders who do not actually believe them to be immoral. This is usually at least partly a result of the fact that the more atrocities that are committed, the more moral barriers are removed, and over time such monsters become far more tolerant concerning the horrors they themselves commit. Stalin himself is quoted by historians as stating (concerning his own political liquidations), "a single death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic."
5. The reason for the previous phenomenon is that, while morally reprehensible deeds can be and are constantly done with the usual human petty selfishness of intent and personal as well as (secondarily) collective gain, truly great and terrible evil deeds with repercussions that affect entire countries or even the whole world, the kind that are recorded in history , often require both the lack of conscience and mercy that comes of not realizing one’s own evil, and an attractive cause that draws fanatical loyalty in its followers, because such people always do their evil by inducing others to obey and follow them. In most, but not all cases, the symbiosis of escalating technology and violence are entwined to serve the purposes of the few. Nazi Germany is a prime example in which ideological motives infused with violence produced the most advanced society seen at that time.(A good example of a leaderless society which added an asterisk to this clause would be that of Rwanda, who not having a charismatic leader because of a recent assassination, induced tens of thousands of normal citizens to participate in the mass killings by distributing millions of machetes to every township with the added compulsion of pain of death if they did not participate, making indiscriminate killing an everyday function of survival).
6. A great leader who rules and acts on a truly grand scale up to his death will almost invariably die in violence, especially in the modern era where disease is less rampant and life expectancies are longer. A perfect example of this rule is illustrated by the shocking number of Roman Emperors who were murdered, up to Hitler, Pol Pot, Nicolae Ceausescu, etc.
7. Most great leaders, not merely the worst but all save the very most altruistic, are actually pathetically insecure men that are acting out personal power fantasies to boost their self-esteem and reassure themselves of their worth, although, as I mentioned above, they are often unaware of this due to their own rationalization. The insecurities that have fueled racial and religious hatred are inextricably tied to regimes ruled by insecure, weak men who use their insecurities as a lightening rod to induce violence or to further mask attempts to consolidate their power base and rid themselves of rivals (something inherently shared by all repressive regimes throughout history, without exception).
8. Most revolutionary political movements, good or bad, are brought to fruition by one man with a mission, proving that the individual is as important as, and in actuality surpasses, society in instigating change, whether good or bad.
9. If reason six is true, then these individuals are, generally speaking, affected by the inherent selfishness of humankind, the corrupting influence of power, and the insecurities that probably inspired them to seek power and rise above the crowd to begin with, making the prospect of a true change (for the better, at any rate) dubious indeed.
10. What then proposes true change and improvement? There lies the mystery......

There it is, keep in mind that I am a Christian and I look at the world as inherently evil. That of course is not to say that there is not good in it either, I am arguing for a generalized view here..... I know that some of you are not Christians, I am interested in any comments, be they constructive or not, agree or disagree.

As for me I think that Christianity, that is true Christianity as taught by Christ is the only way out of the cycle. For hundreds of years the "church" (especially the Roman Catholic church throughout out the last 1000 years have fueled much hate and greed, this is true of some protestant ones as well). After all did not C.S. Lewis state concerning the role of religion within the Irish conflict of his day "that there were many Protestants and many Catholics in Ireland but very few Christians?"