I believe the Bronze Age collapse was a good and necessary thing for humanity. It was required to get out of the local stable point that post-Neolithic society had evolved and settled into.
By the 12 century BCE the noble kings that Marduk and Maat would have smiled upon had long been replaced by the same flavor of sociopaths that lurk the halls of our major governments today.
But these Bronze Age despots had a LOCK on the economy that today’s crony capitalists could only dream of. And they had a lock on the culture too, mostly via the state religion.
BUT: years of bad harvests, disasters and bad omens become increasingly hard to explain. Higher taxes and worse service from the state. No protection from invaders.
Do you revolt? Join the invaders?
No living soul, not even your oldest relatives, can remember time before the empire. No one knows what comes next, so you don’t do this high risk thing unless life really sucks. But people did, because life really sucked.
Proposition: The Bronze Age collapse is to be celebrated as a triumph of the people over the most unequal societies that have ever existed.