Well honestly speaking you can never gauge progress or regression on a historical scale when you are even a marginal participant in it. Your personal experiences both negative or positive taint your perspective on humankind's demise, or evolution both biologically and socially.
Really i don't feel that humankind has regressed nor progressed. On an evolutionary point our species has not changed very much in thosands of years. No one is really any smarter than in the past, we just have used our gained collective knowledge and technologies to alter out environment. Each idea and technology is added on to a pre-existing one. With every added piece of technology, humankind's biological push to adapt has stagnated.
On a social basis it is difficult to measure our progress. Things progress 3 steps in terms of social acceptence then take 2 steps back. When caught in the riptide effect of cultural change it is hard to tell what is actually happening. Today, globally, things are no worse than they were 100-200 years ago. Now it is better in many ways. More stressfull possibly, but in a different way. We worry about our debt, our paychecks being enough or keeping a paycheckor about the violence in the world. People world wide use to worry about crops failing and having nothing to eat for enormous portions of the Earth. They worried about their children making it to the age of 5. Yes this still occurs today but in less places in the world.
Stress yes, but different... and Yeah, life sucks today but we continue. Locally in Detroit and Michigan things blow. It is hard for us to see the big picture at this point in time... But at this point... not worrying about unforseen tragedy, thing really aren't that bad on a whole.
People just need to pay a little more attention to what is happening around them even a little further then their own personal bubbles. If more people can try to understand the reasons for someone else's rudeness or lack of class and caring, things can and could get better....
Who knows, or it could just be my Remeron speaking....