How strongly do you agree or disagree?

[H. Ross Peron]

While I certainly disagree with the naive assumptions of automatic progress or that everything we do in the present is superior to the past (indeed I strongly believe in a role for tradition and the need for organic community), its absurd to say that there has been no progress in the course of human history, especially in the last few centuries. The average human life expectancy is at least double what it was but a relatively short time ago, while mothers in most parts of the world do not have to basically rely on a coin toss on whether their newborn will survive infancy. Incidences of diseases such as smallpox, bubonic plague, malaria, cholera, typhoid, and so forth have been far reduced, no longer sweeping through the land killing millions. Famines similarly, no longer are automatic harbingers of mass death in most of the world. Wars are both fewer in number and less bloodier when it occurs, while practices such as slavery have become unacceptable to civilized human beings. All that considered, I think its absurd to say that there has been no progress in human history.