The list of atrocious behaviour perpetrated by our predecessors on this planet is utterly unquantifiable in its enormity. We may be bad - we are most probably bad in different ways, worse in some, better in others - but the idea that we are somehow 'worse' in general is so impossible to measure, and so prone to example being met with a counter example, that it's really pretty meaningless.
Yes, I can see why counter example vs. counter example is a problem. However, one has to stand back from the detail and take a more general view. An interesting exercise is to look at history from the point of view, a theory if you will, that things have been getting worse. Then, perhaps, ask if you have experienced that over your own lifetime. Of course, there is a lot of hype about, for example, the supposed wonders of digital technology that on the face of it might make it look as if things have improved. But question the hype and one will eventually realise that it is hype, mostly promulgated by scientists, business and politicians.
My own opinion - with due deference to the idea that there is no real way I can confirm this - is that we are pretty shite, but a damn sight better than many that have been before.
I do not agree. In the first instance, during my own lifetime I have seen things gradually go downhill. Life was better when I was younger. Food was better. There was far more freedom. People were less gullible. My job as a teacher was far better. Behaviour generally was better. There was more sense of community. People were less isolated. You could buy the local gossip for the price of a newspaper in the newsagent. There were newsagents, greengrocers, fishmongers etc. In the town where I live you could find out what jobs were going locally by talking to folk in the street. There were telephone kiosks. There were bank branches. People could make their own entertainment. When you did business, paid bills, you talked to people face to face. I could go on and on…….
History books tell us often that things were far worse in the past. However, take the Industrial Revolution. That took people from bad jobs working on the land to even worse jobs in factories. Then came the Technological Revolution. It took people out of bad jobs in factories and put them into even worse jobs in call centres and into the hell of open plan offices. people have become more and more isolated. Less and less in contact with their environment. None of that is healthy.
If you look at history, much is made re the advance of civilization when people settled and became farmers. That is tosh. When people gave up their hunter/gatherer way of life, a few people took ownership of the land. These few people took more and more land, dispossessing those over whom they had power to gain even more power. More recently there were the Enclosure Acts in England. More dispossession. The Highland clearances. More dispossession. In the history of the US, free grazing of cattle was prevented by land owners building fences. Settlers were marginalized. These refugees from Europe had really just switched the frying pan for the fire as the more powerful ensured that the less powerful became utterly dependent on them for work, food etc. This allowed the more powerful even more licence to abuse their dependents, the less powerful.
Moving to a settled existence weakened people psychologically. Hunter gatherers had, of necessity, more awareness of their environment. They had to have. Thus their senses were not dulled by living a predictable, farming life. For example, they had to deal with wild animals, not domesticated animals. Living off the land, hunter-gatherers had to be more resourceful, had to think on their feet. They started to loose all these abilities when they settled. The settled life has weakened people over the millennia. People are less physically and psychologically robust today. They are less resourceful etc. They have become dependent on the state for, basically, their lives. In what way can it possibly be said that any of the aforementioned is an advance? In what way can any of that have benefitted people?