There is indeed good evidence for your argument that our future is far more likely to look like that of our distant past than the techno-utopia painted by so many snake oil salesmen seeking to profit from our one-time and temporary leveraging of dense-energy stores to create an exceedingly complex, global-industrial society, and our hopes/wishes for a ‘better’ world (see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328719303507).
Our species so often fails to see the forest for the trees. But this, of course, is not surprising especially in an age that focusses primarily on financial/economic/geopolitical aspects of our societies while ignoring, mostly, the physical and biological components of our existence that are in the long run far more important and impactful—particularly their constraints.
I would content that it was the shift from seeing ourselves as part and parcel of ‘Nature’ (if indeed homo sapiens ever did) to one of viewing humanity as outside of or at the apex of any ‘natural order’ that has led us to where we currently stand.
As I wrote in a post almost two years ago (see: https://stevebull-4168.medium.com/todays-contemplation-collapse-cometh-xxxiv-1444b2e0dc38):
“Pre/history shows that relocalisation is going to happen eventually anyways, and in order to avert a sudden loss of important supplies that would have devastating consequences (especially food, water, and shelter), we should prepare ourselves now while we have the opportunity and resources to do so.
Instead, what I’ve observed is a doubling-down as it were of the processes that have created our predicament: pursuit of perpetual growth on a finite planet, using political/economic mechanisms along with hopes of future technologies to rationalise/justify this approach. While such a path may help to reduce the stress of growing cognitive dissonance, it does nothing to help mitigate the coming ‘storms’ that will increasingly disrupt supply chains.
The inability of our ‘leaders’ to view the world through anything but a political/economic paradigm and its built-in short-term focus has blinded them to the reality that we do not stand above and outside of nature or its biological principles and systems. We are as prone to overshoot and the consequences that come with it as any other species. And because of their blindness (and most people’s uncritical acceptance of their narratives) we are rushing towards a cliff that is directly ahead. In fact, perhaps we’ve already left solid ground but just haven’t realised it yet because, after all, denial is an extremely powerful drug.”
Ultimately, it's the stories we tell ourselves and others that impact our beliefs, attitudes, actions, and, perhaps marginally, future—I say perhaps marginally because I do believe physics and biology play a much more important role than what we believe or do.
Right now, the dominant stories are that we can ‘science’ our way out of our predicaments not realising that predicaments have no ‘solutions’, only outcomes that we will somehow have to adapt to; if we’re able…