I'm aware of the cycle and I agree, again at one level, that this is, as you said "not progress it is regressive". However, failure to not evolve to the next higher step of psychological evolution in past cycles is not indicative of present or future cycles, which (and you might disagree, here) are inevitably going to continue repeating until we learn the lessons and, only then, break the cycle. And the point in the cycle that we're most likely to break it is when it is "in our (collective) face(s)" and we cannot deny the utter ridiculousness and pettiness of our actions; thus, my previous comment about it usually requiring that things become worse before they can get better (than ever before).

As a whole, we're presently still relatively highly immature, compared to even where a lot of humans are in psychological development at this very moment, and their progress came without the reward of the widespread validation that would come with a "tipping point" event, wherein the majority are moving in the direction of, or have already accomplished, surmounting the mountainous obstacle (of "self-sabotage", to pin it down to the real culprit).

If the majority of humanity could manage to even match what the small percentage have already accomplished (probably less than 5%, currently), I'm sure we'd be at a sufficient level of maturity (of awareness) to stop us from following the same path that has been repeated seemingly forever up until this point.

As is always true with evolution, things are the same... until they no longer are.