What do you mean by “radically changing?”

I would say that there is always change, not that there can be change. As long as there is motion there is change.

Not to be pedantic but it is impossible to repeat the past. We can experience things that bear a resemblance with the past. There can be behavioral patterns that act in a particular way that is shared among all humans but the manifestation of that behavior and the results of are unique to that point in time.

Remakes while I agree are a bit to repetitive or redundant for my liking, are new and different. Like Heraclitus said about not being able to step in the same river twice. The perceived lack of difference is dependent on the scale of the examination. The complaint of Sisyphean repetition can just speak to a jadedness or hedonistic dulling.

One thing I would say is that there has never been and never will be a time in which there isn’t change happening. It’s a matter of degree or severity. Only when a thing no longer exists can there no longer be change.

In that way our time is no different than any other time. Things go through phases of increased social change and times of lesser social change. Any perceived stagnation is just a matter of considering things on a different scale.

I disagree that hopefulness inevitably leads to depression. The lack of fulfilled expectations of that hopefulness turns to depression if our response to it is something along the lines of bitterness. That lack of fulfillment can be meant with something like acceptance instead which would minimize or prevent depression.

I think I basically agree. But I would phrase it a little different. More like:

Society is the result of social interactions amongst a people who share a minimum of interconnected needs/interests. This result is a series of norms/rules about the structure/form of these interactions.

This social interaction structure changes as the nature of interactions change. It’s not so much a recreation as a process of adapting to accommodate new social variables.

I would agree that society is conservative in the sense that it tends towards a maintaining a cohesion among the people within it. But this is not always the case as social upheavals and revolutions happen. This usually seems to happen at time of social breakdowns where the expectations of the members are not met by the society.

Or something along those lines

I think what is meant is that society forms through social interaction between people.

This shared interaction creates norms/rules/etc this becomes more solidified as time and interactions continue. Creating roughly what we would call a culture or society.