Life is more comfortable, but it’s a lot more miserable too. Incredibly high levels of poverty, overcrowded cities, too many work activites tried to pack into just one day, etc.

Life back in the 1910s, for example, was a lot simpler. There was less work that people were expected to do in a day, so they could take their time getting done what needed to be done. And had more time for themselves when they were off work. The general cost of living was way lower than it is now. A person could have a family with a nice home and a big plot of land on a single income. Cities were less noisy and less overcrowded than they are now. They still had plumbing, electricity, radio even, and they also had ways they could be more social in person. They didn’t have cell phones that their boss could hound them to show up to work at any hour of the day. They didn’t have smart devices that could provide immediate and addicting stimulus in their pocket all day long. They didn’t have social media wreaking all sorts of havoc on the entire global society of humanity. People were much more patient back then because they had to be, unlike now when everyone wants everything done instantly. They had a lot of jobs that are mostly gone now because technology and robots replaced them. Paperboys and Milk Men, for example. The food was less processed, restaurants either had fresh, real ingredients or they served rotten food and lost business quickly. With all the information available to people today, people back in the 1910s were significantly more informed on topics than now, especially on topics about their local community. Depression, anxiety, and other sorts of disorders were way lower than they are today, primarily because the causes of those things either didn’t exist back then or were not accessible to the general public.

All the modern amenities can be nice, but for all the good things like the internet do, they also sure do a lot of harm. Plenty of criminals abuse the internet every day, and commit disgusting, unspeakable crimes they otherwise would not be able to without internet access. Terrorists are able to organize much more efficiently than before when they would have to rely on physical messengers, letters, or some contrived telegraph system.

People may live longer now, but is that really a big win? I mean, what, we get on average 10 or 20 more years of suffering? Being old is not fun, they’re not the good years of a person’s life. Even if you make them more comfortable, they’re still old and still have to lose independence and autonomy. They have to just watch as life takes away the freedoms that they had, and the joy those freedoms gave them fades away.

Should the world reset to the 1910s? I don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter since that will never happen. But looking back on how humanity has progressed until now, I personally can’t say that the condition of humanity has got any better.