The way a historian views history is a based on the bias and toolkit he uses. We all lean toward different methodologies when researching history. I for instance tend to focus on more recent cultural and social history especially what is considered "bottom up" meaning the history of how the every man shaped history on a trend upward to the top, further reaching those conclusions based on how social norms, structures and the culture In history shaped it. First the way you look at history of " the hero" is almost Jungian in nature. You look at history in terms of the "great man" theory or top down. Your method for looking at history is a time tested one specifically in Whig historian circles of the 19th century, and although not wrong it isn't used as much today with biographies being the exception1. Carr and Cannadine disagree as far as the utility of history with the former believing history was only useful in so far as it could mold or shape the future, the latter saw no issue with the history student or professor researching the "arbitrary". The issue with both is the historian decides within himself what history is important and what is not especially in the time he lives in. Bias can determine how we view history in good and bad ways. For instance it would seem that you may view history from the perspective of " the west winning", democracy to pave the way, etc perhaps because you live in a fairly industrialized western society? This informs your historiographical lens. That communicates your want to piece together the idea that history is a narrative of a singular character personified toward procession to a better more enlightened and benevolent society is Hegelian in nature. In Lectures of the philosophy of world history Hegel sets out to outline a teleological or historicist model of history, that is history with a goal or purpose2. A pervading theory for a time although there are plenty who disagree with it especially in light of two world wars, environmental global destruction, economic disparity, and race and class struggle. The strange thing about researching history is that although we may look at it as static and linear, when we research history with all our bias, personal nuances, and agendas history changes. There was an author whos name eludes me, that I read in my Undergraduate study that said history is an exotic island that we may visit but never live. In the end who you are and what you aim to study will shape the history you view. Being honest about your bias, and reflecting with your peers can help you adjust your focal point and create a framing point for what in history is meaningful or at least is meaningful to us now. For historiography questions I suggest reading Carr " What is history?" And David Cannadines "what is history now?". In conjunction they can help give a very broad idea about how historiography has developed and changed in the last 80 years or so. In all reality though keep at it! I read a lot of sci/fi fantasy as a teen such as dragonlance and Forgotten realm books and it fostered my love and eventual interest in history. In a way I am shaped much like you are. Hopefully any of this helps you.

Ps. Sorry for the lack of super script with my end notes im typing on mobile and couldn't figure it out

1. Cannadine, David. What Is History Now? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

2.Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich,. Lectures on the Philosophy of World History, translated by H. B. Nisbet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

We are storytelling creatures who learn by forming narratives (with implied causality) out of the noise of our sensory inputs, and we share the results with each other to create culture. What we observe has no "shape," except that conferred by the nature of the universe itself. If we tell the story of history as though it has a shape, then it has that shape, because history is not like the stars and planets. It is a social phenomenon, the collected stories about the human past. It is not a single thing, it is many things and many perspectives. We may reconcile some of those perspectives into widely shared narratives, but that is a process of social negotiation about values, at least as far as ideas of "progress" are concerned.

If you create a dimension, assign different states of the world different valences on it (say, a society with slavery is "less progressed" than one without), and tell a story of history to highlight out progress along that dimension, then obviously yes, the "train of progress" is relentless. But this is Whig history. The conclusions are baked into the assumptions. Not to say the Whigs are not as entitled as anyone else to write history!

This is not to say that ideas of progress are inherently meaningless, but rather that they are social constructs, made by and for humans. The protons and electrons are not judging us based on whether we do X or Y, measuring how well we are doing. And until the Fermi paradox is resolved one way or the other and the United Federation of Planets comes to visit, we have no idea if anything else in the universe shares any moral or ethical ideas with us.

If we think things are better than they were, we have to interrogate what we mean by that. We can hide behind words like "flourishing," but that's just renaming the problem - what is flourishing from some perspectives is languishing or deteriorating from others. I personally like being able to eat better, know more, express myself more freely, and live longer than any but the most privileged of people in history, and I like that this seems more true of more people at the turn of the 21st century, by a lot, than in any historical society. But those are my values, shaped by how and where I grew up, not an objective yardstick. If someone with different values made a different judgement, I could not simply point to the progress-o-meter and tell them they were wrong.