Progressing or regressing?

I am back after a temporary hiatus to pose this question. In the urban jungle certain people act as barbarians even at a place that was considered back ward a few decades ago, but that had exemplary civility, compassion, honesty, and peaceful co-existence. The case in example – public molestation of a young girl in Guwahati where I grew up as a kid. This is totally un-Assamese and an unacceptable degradation of a society that used to pride itself in its value system. Only a few decades ago people were poorer, but they showed decency to other people, especially to women. There was no dowry, no bride burning, and corruption was unheard of or at least not out in open. Now, on a national level, corruption is rampant robbing the poor majority of a decent livelihood. When someone challenges these, the people in power condemns these as Maoist activity or sees foreign hand instead of accepting the problem and making an honest and urgent attempt to solve this. Where there is a will there is a way. By the same token, in the world stage, the world community is becoming impotent. Massacre goes in places like Syria by its own rulers. The world simply watches on helplessly just like the people in Guwahati were indifferent and did not come forward to protect the little girl from victimization. The world talks about progressive civilization and human rights while allowing injustice, inequality/discrimination (on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, color of skin, religious belief, age, national origin, disability, looks (so called ugliness discrimination), …). So, it is time to do a little soul searching by so called civilized society about the basic question – are we progressing in spite of relative material richness. Perhaps our souls are getting poorer as we accumulate wealth at the cost of others. Perhaps human beings are on a self-destructive path.