 The previous criticisms take for granted that it makes sense to speak of the human condition as improving or declining.  But one can question whether these statements are truly coherent.  To vindicate such sweeping claims, it must be possible to construct an ordering of past, present, and future states of affairs.  But, in reality, it is sometimes difficult even in the case of individuals to say whether changes have been improvements or not.  Consider the person who is forced to reflect and regroup after a mild setback.  In the period immediately after the setback, the person is less content but acting with greater autonomy.  To evaluate the change in the person's state, we must treat the values of being content and being autonomous as commensurable, and some will argue that they are not.  Evaluating a change in an entire society involves the same kinds of difficult comparisons, plus a whole collection of additional ones based on distributive concerns.  For instance, if a society becomes wealthier and less egalitarian over time, is this an improvement or not? Finally, even if we think a complete ordering of states of affairs is achievable, we might question the use of dialectical accounts to justify violence and catastrophes.  Why should we be reconciled to a violent war just because it set the stage for institutional improvement? 