Is there any hope for us?

​A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.
William James Durant

This morning, when I woke up, I saw on the news that as of today, the full application of the EES (Entry/Exit System) check when entering and exiting the EU member states began at the borders of Serbia with the countries of the European Union.

That rule started in October last year, but those who travel will only now feel the complications and waiting for the full implementation of that decision.

In addition to us (who are here at the door of Europe), this rule also applies to all countries that are not members of the EU or members of the Schengen Agreement.
So those coming to Europe from GB, USA, AUS or JPN will have to wait.
And whether they travel by road, sea, rail, river or air traffic.
Waiting for the reading of fingerprints and face, will be waiting for all of us...
And that's why, although this morning we mentioned the plan for a short vacation in June, today, while I'm watching the news on TV with kilometer columns, I can't think about traveling.

Rather, a darker topic comes to mind, how we are slowly sinking deeper and deeper into darkness, how our society is falling apart...
I've read a lot of great suggestions for #weekend-experiences and #weekend-engagement threads today but the one that mentions empires is kind of in line with that decay, so I'd like to type a few of my thoughts into this post.

Total failure - It happened to the Roman Empire, could it happen to our modern society?

Nothing in this universe is eternal and everything ends sooner or later.
And so great civilizations, societies and empires have their own development, peak and decline.

The Roman Empire, a giant that collapsed due to excessive border expansion, could not militarily defend all those conquered territories, and after 5 centuries of domination in this part of the world, it ended after decades of collapse.

Roman forum

The old Greek empire fell apart due to internal fratricidal wars between Athens and Sparta, when the exhausted states and cities were conquered by another empire, first Macedonian and then Roman.

The empire that lived for millennia also ended due to internal conflicts and divisions in the priesthood and among the pharaohs. Egypt, which is the home of the pyramids, still today shows the world its greatness, and it is easy to imagine how big it really was three millennia ago.

I read somewhere that the fate of great world powers and societies is not written in the stars, but in their ability to learn from the past.
However, according to their behavior and the events in the world today, it seems that those history books are lost somewhere.

"Unlike ancient civilizations, modern society is characterized by technological progress and global connectivity," someone will say. This can help modern society to overcome the crisis in which it finds itself today.
However, it seems to me that technological progress (and this AI that is all around us) leads to the loss of common values, and creates an even bigger gap between the rich and the poor, and corruption and scandals within the ruling elites, which are connected globally, depict the beginning of the downfall of modern society.
I don't know if there is still time for a total recovery and to stop the madness in the whole world, but I do know that if we continue on the path we are on now: accumulating wealth by killing nature and our planet as well as other human beings for something we do not need to survive, in addition to leaving intelligence and knowledge in the hands of artificial intelligence, human civilization will not be the same until the end of this century...