Hesiod thought every age was worse than the last, and you can find plenty of "kids these days" or "men were better back then" comments throughout the written record. The idea that everything is perfectly cyclical also crops up.
On the other hand, I can't think of a single example of "the way my parents/ancestors did things was wrong". The closest is maybe just a neutral observation that fashions change, or regret that a specific innovation isn't taken up faster. TBF younger authors have to be less likely to be reproduced, but the difference is stark.
Take it as granted that civilisation is improving over the long term. Then, "progress" is when that improvement happens.
If it's not improving over the long term, progress is no longer a meaningful concept. There's no real word for it in ancient languages, since people either thought everything was slowly getting worse, or perpetually staying about the same. (And honestly, was 1500AD better than 1500BC?)
Edit: Per the questions in the text, saying you want progress is just saying you believe in this kind of "whig history", and you would like society to improve somewhat.
I have no idea if that has anything to do with real life, or it's just a very famous movie, but they do eat a lot of weird fried stuff and have terrible health stats.
Traditional spiceless dishes, like Christmas pudding?
I think you have it backwards. The UK conquered the world, in part for spices (although that was more a Spain and Portugal thing), and used them. Then, you stopped importing them for a few decades as government policy and switched to "grease as the primary flavour".
Seems like that depends on a group of screenwriters with a masochistic enjoyment of denial. You have to think it would be a very tempting subplot to start.
As a result, most of the ideas people here have involve like three main characters. I'm not sure about 30 Rock.
One nice thing about nature is that it has totally different problems than we do. Like, we should be glad we're not wild deer, but they never have to deal with bureaucracy, or subtle mean girls shit.
I encounter negativity when discussing politics online. Somehow quite a few people get insulting and expect me to change my view after. It’s irritating and hinders my will to be open minded when discussions are tinted with insults.
In some cases, it has to be people that just get off on conflict. Trolls, but like a kind that pretends to be a normal community participant. In other cases it's more like they've forgotten there's someone real on the other side.
When you have a good conversation with someone you don't agree with at all, that shit is fascinating, though.
Sure, that may be (it's definitely not in userspace). But don't forget it works by crashing your program.