Welcome aboard!

Glad it was helpful!

It's a highly allusive poem. Aside from the technological advance, wherein lies the progress?

@@LitProf Good evening. How about the massive increase in life expectancy, the enormous reduction in contagious and infectious diseases (even accepting current circumstances), the abolition of slavery and serfdom, the fact that racism is no longer legal (albeit still prevalent), the enormous advances in our understanding of how the human mind works, universal access to education and culture, the reduction in violence, and the advances in democracy (universal suffrage)?

And - no doubt more controversially for you - the fact that women control the decisions about their own bodies, the fact that people can generally express their sexual identities freely without being judged for who they are, the abolition of the death penalty in most civilized countries and the fact that religious zealots can no longer impose their dogma on the rest of us? At a simpler level: the fact that you and I can have an honest disagreement about fundamental issues and neither of us can impose our ideas on the other?

@@nicholasjohnfranklin7397 Your mistaking material advances for moral and social advances: refrigerators and cars have improved....sneakers and clothing have improved but this does not necessarily mean there has been moral and social improvement....there are more slaves in 2021 than there have ever been before but we tend not to be exposed to such truths through mainstream media.....

@@roughdraught153 How ironic that you should say "there are more slaves than ever before but we tend not to be exposed to such truths through mainstream media". CNN, about whom I have much to criticize, have been doing a concerted anti-slavery campaign for some years now. In any case on what do you base your assertion? More in the world as an absolute number? More people illegally trafficked? "Enslavement" is a weasel word that can cover any number of sins from forced labour to some marital situations to simply exploitative work. I find it very hard to believe that legal slavery is at an all-time high in those parts of the world in which we have some influence (the Western Hemisphere, Europe and the Anglosphere). Now if you are including for example the unfortunate inmates of Chinese internment camps for the Uyghurs, then I suppose the absolute number may be high because the world population is higher than ever - but simply bearing in mind the tens of millions of people who were in Stalin's gulags and in Nazi labour camps, I suspect you are simply making up your "more than ever before". Again, we are certainly more aware of current and past crimes of enslavement thanks to the mainstream media that it is so fashionable to vilify. Social improvement? Well the welfare state seems like a pretty big advance - ever read anything about the lives of the majority in Victorian England. for example? Crime rates around the world have been falling for 25 years - that can't be bad. Moral improvement is, of course, more tricky. Who's morals? You mean yours, of course! But why not the morals of a Talib mullah or a Buddhist leader in Myanmar ordering genocide against the Royingya. They no doubt has as sophisticated a theological worldview as you do - but I'm sure we can agree that we wouldn't like their morals imposed on us. My morals are well-served by a legal system that allows freedom of religion and freedom of no religion, divorce, family planning, gay marriage and freedom of expression (especially no blasphemy laws). Yours may be affonted by some of those advances. However the only objective measure of our moral advancement is that we can live in peace and respect with each other and amicably agree to differ.