The world was approxiately 100 trillion times more bleak in the 1930s and 1940s. We weren't on our way to a new dark age then either. This is an extraordinary golden age by comparison. There are no world powers currently trying to kill each other, the biggest disputes are mostly between richer nations and about trade, and those disputes are trivial compared to the past. War is rare, famine is rare, food is relatively plentiful, as is global aid, vaccines, etc. Progress across nearly all fields of science and technology continues, rapidly so.