Things have mostly have been getting better. I'm more likely to die from a heart attack or cancer than I am from being killed in an act of violence. My ancestors didn't know this. Not even when the church and Jehovah was more firmly in control. I've also never really known what it's like to starve. That's becoming more common for people to not know it. It was still common, here, during my great grandparents time, and even my grandparents knew poverty I can't even comprehend during the Depression.
I'd say overall things really are getting better. A lot of people even get healthcare as a basic human right, and labor laws that make us apex sloths compared to all but our most recent ancestors. We also have a lot of places with safe, clean tap water, far more than we did a century ago.
When you aren't looking and anticipating the end things really don't look that bad in grand scheme of things. We've even had many generations of children now who don't know what polio or small pox are because their childhoods were and are free of it.