It looks like our civilization has passed its peak and now bouncing back to medieval ages.
Proactive people look at the big picture, search for facts instead of opinions, watch for trends in data and make decisions based on those.
Reactive people just go with the flow until some big event happens, then maybe sometimes things change.
Remember, civilization needs constant effort to maintain so by default things are getting slightly worse over time. If there's enough proactive people for upkeep, it stays the same or even gets better. If not, things keep getting worse until something sufficiently bad happens, then outrage follows and reactive people spring into action - e.g. protests or outright revolutions depending on how bad things were allowed to become.
When things are good (or at least good enough) for a long time, less and less people see the need to be proactive...
The fact is you get current state with all its gory details but the past with bad parts filtered out.
Sure they can. Just pull the electrical plug on the 10,000 IQ general AI. Its future is entirely contingent on the continued existence of cheap oil, which we are already well past its peak.
Alarm about the end of civilization is wrong far more often than it is right, but it is eventually right. Societies just recover over time. I'm afraid we've reached the level of technological sophistication that it might be hard to avoid putting a real end to it next time. Our current situation is materially different due to our machines.