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How do you define "things"?
On a global scale and on average, life for humans is getting significantly better than, say, a century ago. The number of people dying from preventable diseases, war, natural disasters has been steadily going down for a while now.
Of course there are many more people on earth than there were 100 years ago, so accumulatively there is a lot more suffering now.
Also, the lives of individual people, the state of certain countries and areas are certainly getting worse.
As for non-human animals... For most of them the world is getting increasingly less habitable and for those who are raised in an industrial setting for human consumption, living conditions are largely atrocious.
I think your question is too broad for a single answer. But you might be interested in this now 17 year old (!) TED talk by the late Hans Rosling, which at least partially answers your question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w
100 years ago there were more things that just happened to us that we couldn't do anything about. It's hard to eradicate a virus when you don't even know what a virus is.
Nowadays we are plagued with completely solvable problems. We could eliminate measles, but dumbasses are afraid of vaccines. We could feed everyone, but we got billionaires to maintain. We could stop destroying the earth, but then who will burn all this oil? We could cooperate on a global scale, but then we might have to talk to brown people, ew. We could stop bombing each other, but then how would we prove to our gods that we're good people?
So yeah "things" are shittier, because nowadays we have the ability to live in a nearly post-scarcity society but we just don't wanna.
So yeah "things" are shittier, because nowadays we have the ability to live in a nearly post-scarcity society but we just don't wanna.
Humankind could have been living in blissful peace for centuries. We've always had the ability to not kill each other or fight for resources. But many people, then and now, don't want that.
The way civilizations/empires/countries have operated has largely been competitive. It's naive to think we'll all just come together and solve these very complicated problems.
Saying that people are stupid or racist... I don't think that barely has anything to do with what prevents all major countries of the world to work together to combat things like disease, climate change, inequality, etc.
Humankind could have been living in blissful peace for centuries.
Nah. This is a unique moment in history - access to objective truth has never been so widespread. In theory, it's a lot easier to lead people to war if you can convince them that their neighbors' customs and culture are causing your crops to fail or some shit.
But it turns out that people simply prefer to reject objective truth. So they'll blame gays for hurricanes and tell people that homelessness is punishment for sin.
Everything is definitely shittier now.
I like your take on this question. I applaud you.