Are We Lost the Ideal Type of Humanity?

We need to describe the ideal type of human being we wish to see around us. We have abandoned those ideals once animating our civilization, refusing to learn them anew each generation. History and literature rebuke our self sufficiency. It's not so much that people of olden times were the finest ex mplars of higher humanity,. for they too fell short of their ideals as must all who aspire to higher things.