We want better picture to watch and play new entertainment that has no direct link to improving our abilities as a species or bettering our survival. Those are just things to make life more enjoyable, because a lot of what we invent is aimed at making life more enjoyable, because all in all things like food are on average fairly available in most of the world. Of course these things are worthless either. Improvements to video technology allows for clearer imaging in the sciences and can help in other areas that visual technologies serve important practical purposes.

Basically we weren’t and largely still aren’t on some set path to some technological goal. We get side tracked. The entire globe is currently focussed on developing and building a way to colonize mars or create “infinite clean energy,” we have bright minds at work making pills to improve orgasms or designing video game systems or engineering new colors of paint that last longer. It’s always been that way to some degree. Regardless of our ability to think of and plan for the future or not- we live in the now. In a lab somewhere are some
Geniuses of math and science using rare and expensive tools of enormous power to figure out how to make the black on the next generation of TV look “blacker.” That is not a development likely to be immortalized in history books discussing man’s technological progress. The jump to 1080p is probably not going to be a milestone note in human development.

So once starvation wasn’t the default and with a little work and better than horrible luck we had a pretty steady food source, people tend to turn to making life better. So we invented lots of technologies to make life better. Around the globe there are records of things like slowly improving sanitation. At first ways to keep pests and stench etc. away from where we sleep and eat. Over time slowly a growing realization that waste is connected to sickness and efforts towards mitigating the health impacts. We experimented with food- what’s safe and what isn’t, but also how to prepare more pleasing or filling dishes and finding new foods and flavorings because once you have some stability in not starving your focus can shift a little from how to get food onto how to enjoy food.

There was ALOT to invent when you are talking about “cave men” because they didn’t even invent the cave. Anything you can’t find on the ground basically doesn’t exist. You’d probably start inventing all the life or death stuff. Better ways to get and keep stead supplies of food and water, better ways to fight or avoid predators and pests, medicines so that when you get the sniffles it doesn’t mean death. People like comfort and a lot of comfort ties in to life or death. Warm clothes and blankets. Ways to keep your home warm. Ways to keep cool. Ways to keep warm without choking to death or burning your home to ash.
Tools that let you do more in a single day or exert less effort or face less danger doing the things you regularly do. Humans now and presumably our ancestors tend to put effort into improving things we encounter everyday, into finding “hacks” in everyday life to make tasks faster or easier or less perilous etc.

That’s one possible way to think of it. Who would be trying to invent a rock that does math when no one has chairs or windows or shoes? While humanity did develop all sorts of critical and impressive concepts and technologies over the tens of thousands of years of history we have some insight to- we were busy inventing everyday stuff.

We improved buildings and furnishings.

We figured out how to use gravity or pressure or other means including natural kinetic energy or heat to do work- turn mills, irrigate, heat and cool. We figured out how to use animals to assist in labor and other tasks. We developed ways to couple animals to equipment and tools and conveyances and we had to come up with those tools and conveyances and the coupling means and the tools and the vehicles and such all would see improvements. We figured out paths and roads and started learning to engineer them to last longer or work better or resist erosion or rutting and sinking and other issues.

ing and working on survival based needs, we have more time for art and thought, including science- asking and trying to answer questions and doing things just to satisfy curiosity. The scope and scale we can explore increases. Often the fruits of these labors pay off in better living or increased prosperity or in further advancing technology.
The tools we use for farming and grooming and building etc. needed to be made and then improved. Clothing and irrigation and crop rotation, fertilizers and methods to deal with pests. Medicines and medical knowledge, reading and writing, domestication of animals.

Realize that just getting to the Bronze Age is a huge thing. Some minerals can be found, at least in small quantities, almost laying on the ground. These are the metals our early ancestors mastered first. Other minerals were very rare, while common in the earth, without the ability to dig deep or the knowledge they were there, you wouldn’t know. Asides chance and occasional meteors or seismic activity or such- you wouldn't know they existed and they’d be very rare, perplexing. So we had to develop a lot of technologies to get to where we could even really start playing with these things. For someone to be able to spend the time and effort to just start digging to maybe find something useful- to be able to dedicate time and resources to science and curiosity, we had to be at a place where we had stability. Permanent settlements and access to agriculture and animals steadily and reliably. As we start freeing up time and individuals so that not everyone has to always be hunting and gather

Look at the space program. Astronauts today enjoy much better meals and have toilets instead of cans and diapers (they still have diapers for some things..) but compared to 60 years ago with the early space missions how much have we improved? We went to the moon, going to the moon is still a major undertaking full of danger. The technology has advanced but it isn’t like night and day. Most of the problems that were problems in 1969 are still problems in space exploration in 2023. There haven’t been any major advances to the craft used- the US was using the same basic space shuttle design with incremental improvements and the Soviets used… basically the same capsule design as is… since early space flight. There are more options for meals and things are slightly more comfy and slightly less dangerous. That’s about it. It’s been incremental.

We has to develop processes to make hotter fire and extract various elements etc. to treat and mix and burn out impurities in modern steels. It was an i crime tal process. Someone had to figure out what made steel strong or weak and then the technology to manipulate it on an atomic and molecular level. Hay, hay was a major development. All sorts of things we take for granted were developed- and then subtly improved over thousands and tens of thousands of years. We had to “unlock” the building blocks to open new frontiers and slowly but surely improve knowledge and quality of life.

As weather and conditions generally improved post ice age and the conditions- fertile top soil and fresh water made it more practical- we started to develop agriculture and livestock keeping. These are huge technological undertakings. You forget that it isn’t exponential in the sense that even today with all our technology we struggle with basic improvements to many natural processes and materials. While we have for example certain exotic metals and composite materials- iron and steel are still fundamental materials that aren’t just used because they are cheap- in some applications you really can’t beat them. To get from flint to alloy steel was a long process. One that has only been marginally improved and specialized today. Many ancients metals hold up well against modern metals.

It’s generally accepted that the greatest leap towards modern technology was agriculture and livestock. Until the end of the ice age these things weren’t practical most places. The ice age wasn’t just a big cold period. It changed the face of the earth and it also brought fresh water and fertile soil as it subsided. Our historical evidence points to humans as largely nomads through the ice age, crossing land bridges across continents and spreading the globe often over paths that have been submerged under water since the thawing post ice age. This fits the picture I paint you. Up until the ice age most humans were commonly nomadic and would travel to find better climates or to follow prey or forage fertile areas and such.

Long story short we end up with nomads. You either find a really great cave and area which inevitably leads to the thought by others in your group that there may be even BETTER places, or a bad place that makes you want to move again- or maybe you find a good area in your travels but there aren’t any super close good caves- so you start to “commute” from a good cave in a bad area to a good area and back.
This itself is a huge development. In this time we focus on developing general knowledge, navigation, communications, tools and skills and such if the nomad. People start dealing more with new climates and varied ecology. The more people are nomadic the greater odds of people running into strangers- diplomacy, war, language, sharing knowledge and mixing genes and such.

So there are layers and complications and considerations. Life isn’t a cartoon and seldom are countries ran by a single person or directly controlled by the people. That doesn’t mean people don’t have indirect culpability at times in things or that we can pin any wrong on the abstract concept of government or a few bad eggs- but at the very least the concept of “bad guys” comes down to specific situations and contexts. Or we could argue that no government and no group formed for the self interest of people and likely no people are truly “good guys.” There are our intentions and our means. What we are trying to do and why and how we do it.

So we can’t always label the actions of a larger entirely as it’s actions because we have to remember that these things aren’t living entities. “The market is unforgiving..” there is no stock market. It isn’t a person or an organization or an AI or a bull that lives in a skyscraper. It’s the collective will and actions of those controlling it. It’s a system governed by the rules set in place for it.
It’s people. Sometimes when a nation does horrible things the majority of its people know and support those things. Other times they tacitly supported it. In other cases the people of the nation at large are just as upset at that horrible thing done in their name and don’t want to be a part of such actions.

If one group seeks to take another’s freedom or some other ideological battle begins, that is another case that isn’t strictly always based in survival but where men will often fight to the bitter end to ensure that the world left to the survivors is the sort of world they’d want to live in. The USA like many countries has at times done awful things. Sometimes with the intention of protecting and sometimes misguided or malicious reasons. A government is made of people and what is done by a government isn’t always a reflection of that nation but a reflection of certain powerful persons using their positions and power not for the government or people but to shape a world to their individual will.

When we start getting into human interactions- where one group has a hunting ground or living space that provides for their people and another group wants to share those resources- the first group may aggressively assert their “ownership” over those resources. The second group, in absence of other options, might then aggressive attempt to to take control.
If there is one well in the desert and it can only provide water for 100 a day, if two groups of 100 both live there… no matter what someone dies. If each group sacrifices 50 of their own to share the well, 100 people die, people who likely did not want to die. If the groups war for the well, at least 100 people most likely die, but either group in theory has a better chance of each individual member of that group keeping their life. Who lives is not based on some lottery or group decision concerning the value of each member etc. it is decided by one’s ability and deeds in a person to person contest of wills and fighting potential.

No single person in known history acts exclusively for the good of others and even at that a persons ideas on morality and what is good for others may seem horribly evil to others. Few atrocities in history weren’t committed by people who considered themselves “the good guys” or making sacrifices for a “greater good.” I am not excusing or sympathizing with perpetrators of such acts, but it is true that simple survival is a weighing of lives and suffering. To eat and to drink and to even have the most basic of needs met means that a human being must cause suffering or death. Weighed against the millions or billions of micro organisms in a drink or water or against the life of a bird or a plant most humans will place ours or our peoples lives above that other life.

Indeed- or that the concept is a little more nuanced and when it comes to understanding history vs. Memorizing it, we have to step away from some concept that nations are a singular entity that is binary good or bad.
The larger lesson is often that it only takes a few bad individuals and then those who allow it to end up on the wrong side of history.
What we are almost always looking at in history is self interest. People are trying to survive and trying to have comfort and wealth and happiness and control to maintain those things.
How far someone will go and over what- killing thousands to end a war that could kill millions isn’t morally clear cut but all but the staunchest pacifists would likely say it is not as “bad” as starting a genocide so that a handful of officials can keep their positions in the next elections.

All true- but in this case it is even simpler, but many people are just too simple for the simplest concept.
Gender can mean EITHER chromosome based sexual role or an identity. Very few people argue that there are more than two chromosomal sexes, the argument of gender is the interpretation of identity within those genetic groups. In that sense the bi can easily be seen to refer to not have a preference for a si filar gender.
Another simple to understand concept is that being “bi sexual” only implies that a person has two sexual preferences. There is also “pan sexual” which there wouldn't be much point in such a label if there were only two identities as bi sexual would already cover it.

Imagine if every motorcycle had a curse where if you got injured between 1 and 8 billion people would probably get injured as bad or die. Ok. So they say: “until we figure this out no one can ride motorcycles.” And a bunch of chromosome impaired individuals started hooting loudly about it. So they said: “fine. You can ride but wear a helmet..” so then you get on a motorcycle naked except a helmet and do wheelies at 90mph in the rain and turn around and say: “these guys are stupid! What will this helmet do if I fall off this bike naked at 90mph in the rain?!” Well yeah man. That’s… duh. No freaking sh*t. The expectation is that you might go above the bare minimum and even go as far as to put your self preservation and the lives of others before your need to have a beer right at the bar.