Civilization has ALWAYS been about to collapse. Choose a century, and chances are high that you'll be able to find a respected writer or thinker who is Absolutely Sure that humanity is done for. For instance, in the 1700's, Thomas Robert Malthus was sure that humanity would go extinct due to starvation (using wildly-flawed logic which people still somehow took seriously); in the 1800's the military thinkers were sure that with the advent of industrialization, humankind would war itself into the grave (see Mahan's "The Influence of Sea Power Upon History"); and in the 1900's, see Oppenheimer's quote of Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita: "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

In other words, we're ALWAYS about to die, about to be flushed down the crapper of antiquity...but somehow we as a species emulate the English national tradition of "muddling through".

To be sure, things are going to get worse - no doubt about that. And the greed and power-madness of the tyrants of industry aren't helping. But we're still going to muddle through, overcoming all obstacles through sheer obstinacy, righteous outrage, and - more than anything else - the quiet desperation that provided the thematic inspiration of Pink Floyd's song, "Time".

I have to believe that, and strive to grow and multiply like the anthropomorphic cancer cell that I am...because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate.