Humanity's Past vs. Future

I listened to Bertrand Russell's chapter on Rousseau tonight. It was fascinating. The Frenchman associates each achievement of the then modern society with a vice. Social cohesion in the General Will is good politically for him, but the tinsel of socities' cultures bad. Everyone has their own opinion however, and one man's rationality is as different from another's as are their "sentimentalities" (an important Romantic word for the Frenchman). Cooperation in mutual esteem made possible city states, wherein the individual interests cancel each other out until what is left can be elevated as the substantial General Will. The favors of nature allowed humans to advance in technology, but maybe you are asking what advance really is.

Quoting Enrique

Is human thought in decline or once again entering a logistical domain within which it cannot sustain competency? I ponder whether we could have invented computers a thousand years ago if thought was uninhibited by deterministic and irrational factors. Many crises seem to be capable of overpowering thought completely. Is modernity more attributable to a few centuries of favorable climactic conditions than human nature? On how many occasions during history has the course of reasoned advancement been derailed by unfavorable conditions, and what does this imply about the probable consequences of our current ecological and social dilemmas? If institutions publicize a positive message and work towards solidarity despite all the hardships hundreds of millions are facing, will this be enough to get a globalized humanity through catastrophes of a severity that earlier epochs of less integration could not surmount?

From Book VI of Plato's Republic (here Plato critiques those who are "wise" through their study of society):

I might compare them to a man who should study the tempers and desires of a mighty strong beast who is fed by him--he would learn how to approach and handle him, also at what times and from what causes he is dangerous or the reverse, and what is the meaning of his several cries, and by what sounds, when another utters them, he is soothed or infuriated; and you may suppose further, that when, by continually attending upon him, he has become perfect in all this, he calls his knowledge wisdom, and makes of it a system or art, which he proceeds to teach, although he has no real notion of what he means by the principles or passions of which he is speaking, but calls this honourable and that dishonourable, or good or evil, or just or unjust, all in accordance with the tastes and tempers of the great brute. Good he pronounces to be that in which the beast delights and evil to be that which he dislikes...

Is society as a whole really the Great Beast described by Plato? Can the Great Beast become less beastly and begin to consciously evolve and become human? What could cause it? Right now I can's see it happening. The Beast is too strong and like a powerful tiger, demands to get its way.

Other questions:

How diverse are the many cultural societies of the world?

Are they all equally bad or good?

Is there just one "Western culture" or many?

What elements of a society are inherently linked to others and where are the "logical atoms" which philosophical analysis sought for a hundred years ago?

Reply to Enrique Cyclical theories of history can be found in may cultures. So it's not unusual for us to ponder that we go through peaks and troughs. I was a 90's teen. I still often say to myself that 1996 was the high tide for this age we are in now. The tide is receding as I see but you never know.

Reply to Enrique
The question that you are asking is one that I wonder about a lot and it has also been one looked at in other threads

I think that the future of our culture has been on the brink of collapse for a long time. I think that the current Covid_19 pandemic is not the underlying source of this but it could hasten it forwards, mainly through economic factors, if huge sectors are plunged into severe poverty. it may be the reset button, to end the majority of civilisation and I am not sure that what you suggest about positive messages from institutions will help. It may do the opposite, in lulling people into a sense that everything will be fine, when the exact opposite is true.

One thing which I have been thinking in the last few days is that what may happen is that the ruling class may allow civilisation to collapse for the majority of people but preserve themselves. There is a growing awareness that resources, especially petroleum are being exhausted, so that humanity cannot live in way of the present consumer materialist society. So, one scenario I wonder about is a process whereby the ruling class simply ensure that their lives and lineage are protected, while the rest of the population are left to go down the route of cultural collapse. I don't know if this could happen, because it would involve making the majority of the population blind to this process, but I think that it is possible if the mass media are able to distort truth carefully enough.