It's so easy for an academic on better than $64.00 a day, sitting in his ivory tower contemplating the improvements for other folks on a dollar a day or four times that to support their existence. And in the sure and certain knowledge, he couldn't live on either amount! This tells us, here's a man who just doesn't give a rat's, how the other half lives or that more and more of our finite wealth is concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. After all, he's alright jack! As for the world improving so other are less motivated to leave us with what we have? Illusionary in every sense. If they can buy it all then that's what will happen . Failing that they'll take it by one means or another. The people of Tibet, for example, weren't wealthy or well resourced nor were the folks in Ukraine. Yet some power or resource hungry entity wanted and took what they wanted. And in an environment where the truth was the very first casualty. As it is for all power hungry political enthusiasts, or those paid to peddle propaganda, like those "scientists/medicos who assured us tobacco and asbestos were benign! Or that the burning of fossil fuel will not harm us or the planet. Yes, we can do far better. I mean two-thirds of households on the planet are places that have no washing machine and women slave many hours just washing clothes and or ferrying water! Bet there are no musing academics who'd gladly change places with those women? Just study them like ants and comment how comparatively well off in comparison they're to the starving folk in a drought-ravaged sub-Saharan Africa? All we need to make our world ar far better place for all who share it, is affordable energy and consequent affordable potable water. Cheap enough to support truly awe-inspiring irrigation projects that mean, nobody staves, cooks with cattle dung or ferries their daily water supplies on their head or wash the family's linen by hand in a never-ending cycle from dawn to dark. Alan B

with the mass slaughter of the unborn, the practice and promotion of gross immorality, Narcissistic leadership , widespread acceptance of pseudo science, dramatic increase in fatherless kids one could hardly say that the world is improving. There is only one sure truth that remains and that is Jesus Christ who came to save sinners. I doubt very much whether those wiped out in the flood were any more immoral than us. Thanks to the swamp of so called 'elite' man is as arrogant, violent and immoral as any other time in history. One needs to totally bury themselves not to see what is happening around us. Thank God the Word of truth reveals that the King of every king will one day put things right for those who are smart enough to accept Him.

Of course the world is improving in some ways. But it's not always improving enough, and in some other ways it's going backwards.

One such way is the rule of law. It generally improved in the 20th century, but in the 21st it's being wrecked in many countries by authoritarian leaders like Putin, Duarte and Erdogan who see it as an obstacle.

Another is wildlife habitat. Much of what endangered animals depend on is now gone, and a lot of what's still there is threatened.

So although the present is generally better than the past, it isn't better in all aspects, and complacency certainly isn't justified.

It depends on who you accept as an authority re the state of the humanly created world-mummery in the "21st century".
These four essays give a completely different all-inclusive perspective of the humanly created world-mummery.
http://www.da-peace.org/excerpt-two-is-not-peace
http://www.da-peace.org/excerpt-reality-humanity
http://www.da-peace.org/excerpt-everybody-all-at-once
http://www.priorunity.org/excerpt-no-enemies

This excerpt from a 1978 essay by the same Philosopher and artist describes our deep-existential situation. Which, contrary to all of optimistic statistics and the technological improvements that Don featured in his essay has gotten much worse (many times over).

Because of the ego-"I" or the presumption of separation and independence and the materialistic "culture" of death that now patterns and controls the entire human world, we are constitutionally divorced from the Infinitely Radiant Condition wherein we have appeared.
We are separated from our Primal Food-Source. Humankind is not merely hungry. We are starving. We cannot even hope to be heart-satisfied. and, therefore, our hell-deep hunger has become doubt, unlove, fear, bodily self destructive indulgence,violence, dis-ease, and death that is not merely a change of state but a suppression of bodily existence to the point of the illusion of annihilation.

The problem with the improvement in life quality is that the better it gets, the higher people’s expectations go.
No longer is it enough to have a roof over your head, running water and electricity and enough money for food.
Now, if people don’t have the latest smart phone or tv, don’t have a car and have the money for an annual holiday, then apparently they are in poverty.
What was considered a good life 70 years ago would be called deprivation these days.