In terms of Steem, the seemingly endless 'civil wars' are tiresome and not at all helpful to the current situation.

I agree, for the most part it is attention seeking behaviour more than anything of meaning or purpose.

We need the threat of a common enemy, maybe even an 'alien invasion', to bring us together to work for the common purpose...

They will come soon enough through competition. As I see it, what we need is a better story to align incentives than "steem to the moon!" or economic models. I would hope this would be built into the investment foundations itself and work its way through the layers above.