It's also true that youngsters take their own day-and-age as the new-and-improved era in which they live, and have much less ability to compare past circumstanc

It's also true that youngsters take their own day-and-age as the new-and-improved era in which they live, and have much less ability to compare past circumstances with modern ones. The idea that the modern era is morally superior to preceding ones (even taking into account reprehensible notions such as slavery) is a tautology that stymies a critical reflection of history. I've found it more useful to think of the modern day as a semi-improved and semi-regressed random walk of history. Some parts better, some parts worse. No sweeping generalizations to distort what we can't ever really know in our hearts – how past lives felt.