Frankly, we have so many impoverished, malnourished, suffering humans right now that the average human condition may have drastically declined in the last 10K years. And most of this has occurred while various people aimed for an ideal.
Of course its abstract. I think that before we could produce a monitoring system that measured the average happiness (against misery) of all humans, we will likely destroy the ecosystem. 
But I don't think its far-fetched to suggest that even those iPhone toting, anti-depressant takers in the most well off nations aren't super-duper happy enough to justify 1) everyone else's misery and 2) the destruction of the ecosystem in pursuit of a notion of "progress" that isn't materializing for everyone.
If only we stepped back for a moment to think about "progress" could we maybe accomplish some (and that might include getting rid of some of what we have come up with, and maybe keeping some other stuff)
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