>>8 That mentality is the same mentality people had during those eras of slavery, war, tyranny, and anarchy, because they refused to attempt to look to a brighter future. And the view in
>>4 is the mentality of a pessimist, or a faux-realist who only takes into account the negative aspects of modern society.
Society tends to balance itself, really. When something "bad" exists, over time it tends to get snuffed out. But what is considered bad? Only what society defines as bad. So from one point of view, things are getting worse because we're deciding it is so. Things have not changed from the most objective point of view - society's perception, however, changes from day to day.
Speaking from my personal take on it, the amount of technological advancement we've seen over the last century has brought on an era of as-of-yet unseen amounts of convenience. It increased the quality of life for 1st world countries tenfold. But what has it done for areas of the world that don't reap the spoils of our advancements? Not much at all - but now people are looking at those unchanged situations as "bad." Things that are worse than the norm, despite them never changing. Blame is being placed on the first world countries for not fixing those situations, even though we technically lived through the same conditions for centuries.
Famine, poverty, conflict, illness... all of the "bad" things you could name about the world right now are all things that have always existed, so it's a bit silly to say that we are making things worse by selectively improving things. If anything, we've masked those basic flaws so well that newer generations are treating them like new problems.
Any pessimist can say that society is slowly destroying the earth. Any optimist can say that society is gradually improving humanity. Is the world a better place than it used to be yesterday, a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, a decade, century, millenia ago? That's really up to you to decide for yourself, in my opinion.
