Rousseau, after much thought, decided that humans need Food, Sex, and Sleep to be happy. That's all. But humans also have the capacity to improve themselves, and from this comes all of humans achievements and sorrows....
Rousseau was nuts, but in this, he was close enough, I think.
If your going to be stupid, stick to the basics.
If your going to be smart, be good at it.
It sounds like you're complaining that people are misusing their smartness...
Well, we invented, that was fun.
We built, and that was cool.
We killed each other, and that was rotten.
There's one more thing to try...
Maybe it's time to try getting all humans to a minimum state of happy stupidity, and let them become intellectual at there own risk. Feed the poor. The rest can manage on their own...
Then we can choose to do more work on the old stuff (without the killing), or we can stick to the basics. Our choice, and we live with the consequences of our actions.