Well, personally, I think we're a lot better off both ethically and technologically than we were, say, 2000 years ago.
Somewhere along the way many people finally got the notion that slavery wasn't such a good idea after all and ditched it.
Somewhere along the way many people finally understood that women had the same rights as men did.
Somewhere along the way some people got together in various locations and figured out that having a single ruler wasn't always the best thing, and began having governments where the voice of the people could be heard.
Somewhere along the way a lot of people began to realize that there's far more to a person than the color of his or her skin or the clothes on his or her back.
Somewhere along the way, the life span of the average human being increased thirty or more years, from around 35-40 to around 70 or even 80 now in certain countries. The quality of living is much higher for a large portion of the world's population as well, as compared to where it was 2000 years ago.
I'm not saying we live in a utopia. Far from it. All the ills I mentioned still go on in various areas of the world today. But they're becoming more and more scarce as time goes on.
I think, ironically, that it is our technology that tends to give people a depressive outlook on the world. Nothing really that bad has happened that didn't already exist...we just have far more opportunity to hear about the bad now. And, of course, "bad" makes far better copy than "good." When was the last time the news bureaus reported "good" news as a headline story? It just doesn't sell.
Things are getting better, even if the current situation in the world looks like it's going down. Sometimes a river has to double back on itself to get where it's going....but it does get there.
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