We hugely underestimate the utter fragility of modernity.

Many times in history, we've turned the clock back to a much tougher & rougher past.

For centuries after Rome fell, Europeans couldn't even dream of things like hot piped water, luxurious baths & central heating. We think that the real is rational, that the "system" will deliver the goods. The truth is that modern systems are like spiderwebs: break one part & the edifice gets exponentially weaker. Romans who lived through the fall must have been shocked at how quickly things fell apart. Another period when we turned back the clock was when globalization was reversed right after an assassination in Sarajevo sparked WW1.

Keynes writes about this period eloquently. Things were hunky dory & considered permanently so, and then suddenly everything went wrong. When we blithely mock our own systems with tribal glee, when we knock down institutions, when we take political pleasure in zero-sum fights, when we take war less than seriously, just remember that the cave, starvation & the tribal club are never too far away from modern life. Even the most cynical, jaded and corrupt Romans of Nero's era must have been horrified at what they had unleashed once it was clear they were going way back in time. And once they went back, the only way forward was centuries of deprivation & painfully slow invention. It's hard to correlate these events with our own era but just remember that Rome saw itself & its progress as  eternal, ditto pre war Europe.

Modernity is God's greatest gift to us. Cherish it, cultivate it, protect it. Don't let systems get vandalized, institutions get wrecked. Protecting modernity means protecting systems, institutions & norms of civilization. This is not some idle musing: these things stand between you & your family & chaos. Without truth, systems & objective laws, you don't get science. Without science, you don't get antibiotics. As Rome fell, it's interesting to note that truth & facts became subordinated to  pleasure, corruption, luxury & belief in magic.

It's worth thinking about that as you look at our civilization. 

Modernity, technology, civilization are all very fragile things.