we are not getting wiser

I've been reading Chesterton's little book on St. Thomas Aquinas.

It is enjoyable on many levels. Getting a clearer sense of the Angelic Doctor as a man. Getting a feel for the heart of his theological vision, which turns out to be earthy, world-affirming, revelation-enlightened commonsense.

And the pure enjoyment of Chesterton's prose. And the good, solid thrubbing he gives pretentious "leading lights" of his day, who are every bit as assinine and god-denying as the ones we're stuck with.

But the overall feeling I get from reading about Thomas at this point in history--as Japan slips into a radioactive morass, and America spends its way into collapse and irrelevance, and the Islamic world devours itself and anyone else who gets too near, and the heaps of murdered babies pile up in every "advanced" nation in the world--is that, as a human race, we are WAY MORE ignorant and banal and self-absorbed than we were 700 years ago. And boring, as only the truly demonic can be boring.

99% of the world population couldn't reason its way out of a wet paper bag and wouldn't even want to, and of the remaining 1%, most want to apply their thinking skills to the justification of evildoing.

I look around and find no reason to be proud of the time in which I live.

Am I missing something?