If civilization survival were as simple as KISS, we probably wouldn't struggle with it as much. We need smart, strategic complexity, and humans are limited in their strategic smarts.
The industrial revolution was great for humanity for well over a century. The standard of living in industrial countries advanced farther and quicker than ever before. But that same industrial activity had long term effects that we (as a society) are only just starting to accept and are still in disagreement about how to handle.
We have a cognitive bias that undervalues “negative design” — removing things from a design — and so our social structures ratchet towards more complexity until they break.
We encounter that in software or mechanical design as well.
This is a fascinating concept and I'd like to learn more.
[1] People systematically overlook subtractive changes. Adams, Converse, Hales & Klotz. Nature, 592, 258–261 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03380-y
We have a "cognitive bias" (fear) against relinquishing control. Therefore our social structures ratchet towards more bureaucracy and rigidity until they snap. A skidding car, careening this way and that, needs the driver to stop over-steering. Alternately pulling the wheel the wrong way in a desperate frenzy to take control is the problem.
Many things just work out when you take your hands off the levers. But we also have a political and commercial class who are way too proud to do so. That would seem to invalidate their "scientific management" ideology [1]. The Wizard of Oz would be exposed as a fraud.
I think what's going on in the digital realm shows we've already entered that phase of overcompensation, because so many technologies simply go against common-sense survival instinct, and we seem stuck in cycles of solutionism, adding ever more layers of sticking plasters to fix the stuff we broke last week. We know we are building dangerously brittle and irresilient systems such as a "cashless society". It is this fetish for control that contains the seeds of breakdown.
[1] pretty much the thesis of Adam Curtis's "All Watched Over...", "The Trap" and "Hypernormalisation"
For example, suburban sprawl tries to cover up the negative yield of suburban roads, at some point growth is no longer possible, suddenly, the negative yield of underutilized and overbuilt infrastructure rears its ugly head. The local government is now bankrupt.
It is also the same with capitalism. We need endless growth of the population and the economy. To paper over the fact that each individual ages and their body decays over time, the same applies to a lot of physical capital which rusts, rots or decays in another way. The moment growth stops you will have an aging population, your short lived physical capital will disappear.
The ancient Egyptians understood decay, that is why they tried to make their civilization immortal, that is why they invested in extremely long lived capital, capital that survived four thousand years. The pyramids.