Someone “our age” in ‘24 would have seen the aftermath of the civil war and lived through WW1 so in 1924 they probably thought things were shaping up with no idea what was to come at them in just a few more years.  

nice potted history of 1924, thanks again for these George

Posted by: @frank

Someone “our age” in ‘24 would have seen the aftermath of the civil war and lived through WW1 so in 1924 they probably thought things were shaping up with no idea what was to come at them in just a few more years.  

The old saying, "hindsight is 20/20" let's me think that though we have advanced so much with inventions and technology, and yet our world today is more of a mess than it's ever been.  Life is like a Board Game, we take one space forward and then take three backwards.  

Posted by: @d-m-holcombe

City of Endless Night by Milo M. Hastings,

An example of early dystopian science fiction written shortly after World War I, City of Endless Night imagines a future with a very different ending to the Great War. Set in 2151 and in an underground Berlin, our protagonist is Lyman De Forrest, an American chemist who enters the city to discover the hidden truths of a forbidden metropolis. The subterranean world hosts a highly-regimented society of 300,000,000 sun-starved humans. As the first outsider to enter, he's horrified by what he finds, but will he accomplish his mission and escape the living tomb?

Love your analogy.  I think we are world of people that doesn't learn from history.