[senthil_rajasek]

"That's just how humans roll."

Thats not how I look at it. We have made progress from a society of primitive tribes to a more reasonable society rapidly in the last couple of centuries.

Universal women's suffrage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Womens_suffrage#United_States) did not even exist in the United States until the beginning of the 20th century.

There is an endless number of social issues that Humans have made advancements, including Civil Rights, Gay Rights etc.,

Our understanding of the world has increased [changed] and so has our ability to make decisions based on such new knowledge.

[jswinghammer]

Your bias is defining all those things you listed as progress. For some those items are signs of a degenerate society that has lost its way.

Your thinking is more like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_history#Social_ev...

Than this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory

[benmathes]

You're definitely correct that we are progressing as societies. We observe new rights and freedoms along with rates of death and murder lower than ever in history.

However, it's almost guaranteed that you do descend from conquerors, warlords, or murders. This probability says nothing about what you should do or whether you should learn from the past. It only states that in the past few thousand years shit has been pretty bad, and humans adapted to it.