Your bias is defining all those things you listed as progress. For some those items are signs of a degenerate society that has lost its way.<p>Your thinking is more like this:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_history#Social_evolutionism" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_history#Social_ev...</a><p>Than this:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory</a>