This is not necessarily just a matter of perception if society is indeed generally on a downward arc.
This sounds melodramatic yet it's quite trivial to list countless things that have become much worse, while it's somewhat more difficult to list things that have become much better.
It's the issue with economic/technological development as the main milestone. Would you rather live as an aristocrat in Ancient Greece, or in poverty in the US today? Basically nobody would pick the latter choice but by the things we would typically list as better, a person in poverty today would have while our Ancient Greek could only dream of such. But it seems there's more to life than smartphones, medicine, and air conditioning.
This sounds melodramatic yet it's quite trivial to list countless things that have become much worse, while it's somewhat more difficult to list things that have become much better.
It's the issue with economic/technological development as the main milestone. Would you rather live as an aristocrat in Ancient Greece, or in poverty in the US today? Basically nobody would pick the latter choice but by the things we would typically list as better, a person in poverty today would have while our Ancient Greek could only dream of such. But it seems there's more to life than smartphones, medicine, and air conditioning.