This is why I harp on the "Dark Ages" so much. We already have a template of how these kinds of civilizational declines/collapses go. This is a main theme of St. Augustine's "City of God". The times may indeed seem dark, but what our ancestors showed us is that they can be times of incredible creativity, valor, and building the foundations for a whole new order to rise out of the ashes. The "Dark Ages" were the ones that gave us so many heroes, saints, and stories. This was the age of King Arthur, Charlemagne, Charles Martel, the Book of Kells, Beowulf, Theoderic the Great, St. Benedict, Alfred the Great, Mont St. Michel, Aachen, Rheims cathedral, Saumur castle, Montecassino Abbey, etc. The list goes on and on. The cities of the empire had decayed; Rome was a wasteland and Constantinople was a hive of corruption hemorrhaging influence and stability faster than they could hire mercenaries. It was the Irish in the rural monasteries who preserved classical texts, the Franks and Saxons in their hilltop castles and burgs that crafted laws and refashioned social orders, it was Visigothic knights who carved out footholds while Flemish and Baltic craftsmen created works of art. The collapse of a bloated, bureaucratic imperial structure is not the end of all things; it is an opportunity for people of faith, resilient character, and creative boldness to apply themselves to build something better. Where we are now is not yet full-on civilizational collapse, but that's not such a far-off and improbable condition for us to imagine. So prepare accordingly. This can be a great time to be alive if you meet the challenges we face and will face in the future the way these people did. Dooming is not an option; figure out how to do what you need to do simpler and better. Educate your children so they're intimate with the tremendous patrimony that was built for them with such great effort and sacrifice. Just like the Irish scholars had to virtually preserve literacy in Greek and Latin in the West, we may find ourselves tasked with preserving literacy in English in a post-smartphone and post-AI world!