There's a widely held and unhelpful belief that the world around us is static. We attribute the way our civilization is to a series of decisions made by people who came before us, who had more authority, and who faced more urgent problems that demanded solving.

That worldview is, of course, completely wrong. It's not just wrong, it's hopelessly wrong, and if you see things that way, you need to rub your eyes and take another look.

Civilization is not evidence of stagnation. It may seem like a static beast that is difficult and slow to change, and you're right, but changing it is not impossible. If everyone looked at the world and concluded "Well, this is it", then modern civilization wouldn't exist as we know it. We'd still be running through the woods, living in caves, and eating, um, I dunno, fish, or whatever it is we used to eat before the modern economy ramped up. (I never went to Anthropology class.)

People before us were just like we are: surrounded by lots of people who believed that nothing would change the world. The people we know by name, the icons, the ones in the history books, they're the ones who ignored that "fact" and the people around them who tried to proliferate the unhelpful message of futility.

Everything around you is evidence of mankind's capacity for change, not his resistance to it.