From very early times our species has struggled with the questions arising from multiplicity. Individual v. Society, us v. The Other, hunting/foraging v. Settled Agriculture, Rural v. Urban, are just a few sources of long term historical trends in how our culture(s) have evolved. One way of looking at it is, decentralization v. centralization. It is more difficult than generally realized, I think to "buck the those trends" both as individuals and all the varieties of human culture. Each of the two primary strains of thought generate their own sets of "positives and negatives". Probably in any sort of Ultimate Reality, remember I'm Buddhist, any of the fungible bits of Perceptive Reality are of equal, or zero value. At that level of reality both human monsters are the same value as human saints being part of a UNIverse. Much of Western Culture has adopted a notion of Ultimate Reality based upon Multiplicity, or Dualism. That, to me means a Finite Reality fitted for a God(s) creation of a world characterized by mulitiplicity. Now lets take a peek at the significance of this question of how that relates to the OP's question.
We humans are torn between our egos and our needs for the comforts of OUR herd that provides security and insurance against all those things we wish to avoid. We adopt personal values based upon the values of our own set, and when we "lock-in" those values and become close-minded, we fall into to some degree of Chauvinism. Us v. Them; "We ARE THE People" and closest to the creation/creator of our perceived reality. If our group, whatever it might be, is not the "Top Dog", then our version of reality is out of balance. If some other group is demonstrably "better off" and more dominant than we are, then our inner value structures demand redress and "Justice". We have long memories, but when those memories are recorded and archived history and civilization are born. When not demonstrably "Top Dog" (and that is really tough to do in the contemporary world), be become defensive. Past dominant groups defended themselves using several strategies: Kill 'em all right down to cubs, but slavery was less wasteful; Slaves remembering they are Chosen and "remembering" their Golden Age" tend to rebel, sabotage, and resist "slavery", so the cost of Slavery rises accordingly. For most of our history, in both widest and narrowest definition of the term, autocratic governmental systems have the norm. They go by many labels, but they all boil down to legal and ethical codes designed to secure the dominant position. The more tightly centralized and the larger the group, the more complicated legal systems and government become. Those Cultures that have tended to dominate generally are those groups that adopt strategies of expansion and absorption of less dynamic groups. For thousands of years, centralization has proven more effective in gaining the dominant position within the set. Once ensconced as the Dominant, the need to secure its position absolutely from "The Other" becomes pervasive. Athens tried a reasonably pure form of Democracy where Citizens (narrowly defined) governed by Plebiscite. That worked sorta, effective government was limited by the size of Greek City States, the internal bickering and political conflict within each level of the society. Rome adopted its own form, a Representative Democracy we call a Republic. The Roman Republic turned a bunch of rural farmers in a swampy part of central Italy into one of the largest and most persistent Empires in history. Asia, Africa, and the Americas were distant and isolated enough to germinate their own varieties of basic government, while retaining pockets of even aboriginal cultures.
Our Modern World was the far distant, almost unimaginable future until the 17th century. Aboriginal cultures largely remained ignorant of all the history of literate civilization, and even the time/distance difficulties in Europe kept even relatively small nations manageable by traditional top-down governmental systems. Russia already had expanded across most of Eurasia absorbing near countless smaller ethnic/cultural groups. Turkey and Islam "controlled" much of South Asia (even into China and Indonesia) and large portions of Africa. The Western Hemisphere was know and the contending governments were well on their way to becoming modern nation-states. While China and Asia had previously been in the forefront of invention and innovation, they became more Conservative and inward looking while the West became more materialistic and expansive. As the chaos of Christian Religious Warfare blazed less fiercely, the Scientific Method of thing led to the Industrial Revolution. The first steam engine pumped water out of British coal mines, and that lead to a demonstration of a rail system at the turn of the century. Europeans weren't challenged by China, Asia, or the Americas ... they only saw the potential to expand on the Western notions of our human/chauvinistic place in the wide world. They needed gold, because the economic system demanded it; they need un-claimed land because land was still how the world defined wealth and social position. It took the European leaders of the tine to discover that the world had profoundly changed, and that new systems would be necessary for any culture to survive in anything like a traditional sense. Old cultures died as their populations, languages, and myths became absorbed into larger entities. The Industrial Revolution was terribly flawed, but over the past several hundred years, we humans have been busy editing the script. Inexpensive abundant electrical power has become the rock on which the 21st is almost totally pendent. Even the Transportation and Communications Revolutions begin falling apart where electricity isn't.
You asked for my thoughts on what is, for me a fundamental topic in understanding our spriecies and the process of how we got from inexplicable beginnings to this world of suffering we now perceive.
Of course, that wasn't what you probably wanted at all.
Here's perhaps a more responsive answer. I think we try very hard to reconcile our inner world with the world perceived by others. Its too hard a nut to crack for us, so we take the easy way out and go with what we think we know. Traditional values, myths and Weltanschauung learned while infants, toddlers and children of tender years make up our REAL values ... and, "Modern Values" make us very uncomfortable and anxious. Some see in this what in earlier times might be typified as a Utopia, but we generally regard with a doubt and expectation of disaster ... disaster for ourselves, our families, our ethnic/cultural group, our region, nation, hemisphere, world and solar system. The answer to you question must be determinant on the reader/observer. Is it "better" to be an almost insignificant bit of a impersonal whole (the species), or as fully independent egos? Is our Reality Zero/Infinity, or finite multiplicity, or some other beyond our present ken? Is there a Universal Value, or not? If there is, then which is the better course: to preserve the tradition, or leap into the uncertain and dangerous future? Different placer, times and people will have different answers.
