We have come a long way

I read that many years ago, when my English was at its beginnings and I had a few problems to understand the meaning.
Because I attempted a literal translation of it and in Italian it meant nothing.
Since then, since I understood the meaning, it has become one of my favorite expression, almost like for an American (of my time) is "che sera', sera'".

The problem is that now a days I have few chances to use it.
Every time I think "how far have we come?" my pessimistic view of the world tells me to think of something else.
Not only we are NOT going forward, sometimes it looks to me we are going backward.
And I am far from being proud of myself and my generation.
I think we could have done much more and much better.
I think we could still do much more and much better.

"It's a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra's 1946 Christmas card to America, is full of strange and bitter lessons about who we were and who we have become. It also illustrates the perversity of history -- the fact that things sometimes end up the opposite of the way we expect."
"It's a splendid, heartwarming movie in many ways (and I am not being facetious). It was released a year after the awful ordeal of World War Two ended -- which itself had followed the decade-long tribulation of the Great Depression. America was weary but victorious. Democracy and decency had triumphed over manifest evil -- but the memory of all that hardship lingered on. In 1946, we were a chastened, earnest, prudent, generous, and quietly confident nation of heroes who had managed to lick hard times and Hitler.The Jimmy Stewart portrayal of George Bailey was supposed to embody all the home front virtues in our national character that made victory possible."

I think that the misunderstanding is in that "we were..."
Mr. JK. you were not, you just looked like, and behaved like and wore the mask of...

In reality man was, is and will be always the same.
What changes is the mask he wears and the one he shows.
And how good he is in making the others believe he is the way he is not.