Yeah, but what it makes it so lizard-y? It seems more like a bunny brain, or possibly a Roman Emperor brain.
I think that’s just a nickname someone gave it. Caligula sure was a dedicated hedonist, huh?
People have always liked to complain, but the general level of optimism certainly rises and falls with the times. If you look at things like the stock market, marriage rates and birth rates, they display definite trends, not just random variation. Optimism also changes from place to place. I would argue that the US birth rate of 2.1 children per woman, compared to the Italian rate of 1.3, indicates more optimism here, or at least a greater tendency to take the long view instead of living solely for one’s own enjoyment.
ahem I resemble that remark!
Unfortunately, all too true these days. 
Is that your opinion, or are you just echoing the dogma that’s been repeated ‘ad nauseum’ for as long as I’ve been able to read?
(Which is quite a long time.) 
Most of the people that know me personally, would say that I’m just about as ‘right wing’ as they come, in most ways.
I LOOOOOOOVE my guns, but I actually HATE war and violence.
I LOOOOOOOVE sex! (and I’ve got a hundred dollar bill that says you wouldn’t be able to find anyone that I’ve had sexual relations with, that would classify me as being “uptight” about it.) 
(I would be more than happy to provide a list of references, if you care to take that bet). 
I’ll agree that sex, “appeals across the spectrum”, but I’m not so sure about the violence part.
By the way… I just love your ‘username’! 
A friend once told me "Things ain’t what they used to be . . . and never were. Wise guy.
When you were a kid, the experience for you and for the vast majority of kids was that they and most of their friends were pretty decent, respectful, etc, and the bad kids were kind of background noise. That’s the view from below. From above, the point of view of teachers, etc, the 80/20 rule applies. The bad kids get disproportionate notice.
So when kids grow up, they compare their childhood experience with the distorted view they have from the noisiness of the bad kids. Voila. Kids today are worse than my day. Attentional bias.
My answer is also YES and I put the blame fairly and squarely on Media. Back in the 1940’s post war, children knew nothing about sex until they were at least 13 or 14 years of age. There was no swearing whatsoever on radio or television. No explicit sex, the nearest thing allowed was a peck on the cheek on television. Music was melodious and one could hear the words sung. You could park your car anywhere without it getting keyed. As children of that era we would go and play over the fields close to our home and our mothers did not worry if we were late as they knew that we had no idea of time when we were playing. We never knew about homosexuals as it was kept very quiet. Roll on 21/12 2012.
In other words, ignorance is bliss.
Both evil and the ignorance of it were established long before the 1940s.
No argument here.
What question are you answering?
Parents shield their children from a lot of the world’s harshness. So people always remember their childhood as the good old days, and the their adulthood as the decline.
Social morays and other types are discussed extensively in GQ, mostly in verse, here: