If you want to say that things are terrible now, that people are miserable, that we don’t know how to live well, that our minds and souls are falling apart – go ahead.  I sympathize, and overall I agree.  We have major problems on every front that we haven’t yet figured out how to solve, and in an alarming number of cases we’re not even seriously trying. 

If you want to say that things used to be better, that there was a time when we did live well…please show your work and provide extensive evidence, because I right now I really don’t believe you. 

I realize that I’m repeating myself with this, but I keep seeing the same basic fallacies being made over and over.  The fact that the world feels wrong to you, and to many people, doesn’t mean that it was ever right; things can just have been horrible forever, with the only difference being that we’ve only recently clawed ourselves to a point where we dare even to expect that we will flourish.