[peter12]

I never meant to suggest that you were, and meant no offense by this. I only sought to show that this is the level at which I encounter this line of reasoning. My apologies.

That's fair. I apologize too.

I can agree with this in part, but am not so naïve as to conclude that the challenges to the modern worldview have spelled its end or doomed it to failure. Furthermore, each one of those material signs tends to be evaluated in a very limited sense. "Environmental degradation", for example, tends to presume that nature is prestine, failing to acknowledge that the natural world is also savage and hostile to our species.

Well, let's not forget that political regimes can fail. Marxist-Leninism being the most recent. Old Castro is on record now as saying that Cuban Communism wasn't the best thing in the world. What makes liberal progressivism immune?

http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...anymore/62602/

I honestly cannot say for sure, because quantifying such changes as positive or negative will will generally become subject to the collective conscience.

I think the common experience is sort of a strange benchmark according to current metrics. We normally look at the mean or average experience and we forget that the most interesting things happen at the extremes (discounted as statistically insignificant by statisticians). What about the young men and women that still join up to fight and die for their country?