The macrocosm--our global market economy and social infrastructure--is collapsing, no doubt. And it will be as ugly as you suggest, whether it is incremental (Rome) or self-accelerating climate catastrophe (New Dark Age/Global Dieoff). That leaves the microcosm as our field of practice: getting to know and work with our neighbors, and growing gardens, growing community, and growing awareness, while learning new skills, teaching them to one another, healing what we can of our tattered and collapsing biosphere, and thereby creating the seeds of a new human epoch that might--just might--survive the general ruin. Or not. But at least relocalization is something to live for, to work toward, whether we succeed or fail.