BMR, sorry for putting words into your mouth earlier. I have to question the way you worded your original post but I understand what you were getting at now. To answer your question, I'm really not sure if the world is better off now than it was in the past. There are negatives that you mentioned, but there have been breakthroughs in health care that have improved the quality of life for many people as well as increasing life expectancy. Also, as Jason mentioned earlier there is far less problems with racism although it is still far to present in our society. Also, I don't view divorce as a negative in a lot of cases. It is much better for someone to get out of an a relationship that has a negative affect on them than to stay in the relationship because they have no other options. Now, I do have to say that there are some people who are just to weak minded to fix their problems, but divorce is not always a negative. Its very difficult to say if the world is a better place than it was in the past because as society fixes problems different ones always seem to arrise. We had the cold war with Russia and after that ended we began to have increased problems with the Middle East. I have to agree with Jason, for the world to ever truly become united and a good place to live there will probably have to be a tragedy many times greater than September 11th possibly nuclear or biological war?