When I went to school it was a given that humankind was progressing:
In a somewhat Euro-centered way life-quality uimproved.
In the alst few decades most "progresss2 seems not to have improved people's life (in Europe), so have we arrived at some saturation, were "well" and "better" became indistinguishible?
@Ponderable
I think climate change has changes perspectives on a number of levels.
When it is 130 degrees F or 55 C in India and people don't have enough air-conditioning the politics of the situation will lead to some states turning authoritarian for better or worse, mainly worse.
And the climate situation has nowhere to go BUT worse.
It is quickly becoming THE problem of civilization.
That might be one aspect of the rise of authoritarian governments but there are others.
We may have reached the peak of human civilization. I don't think life will improve for humans technologically or socially.
As already mentioned, climate change is wreaking people's lives; record numbers of hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and record-breaking heatwaves all across the world that show no signs of slowing, and the countries most responsible like the US. and China don't care enough to do anything about their polution.
The powder keg of nuclear war is constantly looming; superpowers like Russia invade smaller nations at will, and even small-time dictatorships like North Korea have nukes. Right-wing ideology (fascism) somehow made a resurgence and is spreading to all corners of the world, including South America and definitely across Western countries.
Humans are increasing at an unsustainable rate; resources are depleting, including fossil fuels, farmland, precious metals needed for technology and water shortages. Plastics are increasingly polluting the earth to the point where they're found in animals and the food we eat; microplastics have been found in human blood.
I realize that maybe every generation says this and prophesies doom and gloom; you could've said this in WW2, during Cold War, etc. The difference this time is the we have more access to knowledge at our fingertips than was ever conceived possible in human history and people still choose to believe misinformation, lies and propaganda. It was always thought that an educated public will change the world for the better. This has been thoroughly proven false. There are more flat-earthers now than ever before; more climate change deniers now than ever; stupidity that would've made you go into hiding from shame (like claiming windmills cause cancer) now gets you elected as a world leader.
We can safely and definitively say the age of human progression has ended. Humans, and the stability of the earth and its resources are clearly rapidly regressing.