4) The comparative study of civilizations leads (at least when taken in conjunction with the point that technological progress and political progress cannot be assumed to be the same, or even driven by the same factors, except insofar as technology can make possible beneficial things that would not have been possible otherwise -- though it can do the same for harmful things, like clickbait or the nuclear bomb) to two insights: first, that civilizations keep collapsing, and second, that they tend to think they're right. No two fundamentally disagreeing civilizations can be right at the same time -- so either value-systems cannot be compared (which is both easily dismissed and likely to contain a grain of truth for the simple reason that, if any of our basic moral drives come neither from culture nor about facts about the outside world, what else could they be but innate? Even the higher animals show signs of a sense of morality in lab tests, I've heard.) or one of them is wrong. It's the same argument as the atheist one against religion, just fully generalized. (I don't think the argument works for atheism, since, if you grant that the God or gods of divine-containing religions want humans to follow them, Christianity and the various paganisms can't be seriously compared -- but I digress.) Hence the utility of generating alternative narratives for the cause of seeking truth.

I think this is the completely wrong part, in that it assumes that any living individual ever considers everything about their civilization to be Good and Right. By and large, even the ruling classes don't get everything they want (for example, they wanted a Hayekian utopia along Peter Thiel's lines, but what they got was the messiness of actually existing neoliberalism). And in fact, one of the chief causes for the repeated collapses is that institutional structures usually can't take being pushed and pulled in too many contradictory directions at once without ceasing to act coherently for anything at all (they become "unagenty", in our language).

The US Congress is a fairly good present-day example: it's supposed to act for the people as a whole, for the districts, and for the "several States"; for the right of the majority to govern as they will and for the right of small ideological minorities to obstruct whatever they please; for the fair representation of the voters and for the institutionalization of the political parties. When these goals become contradictory instead of complementary, the institution stops functioning (ie: it passes no legislation, not even routine matters, instead of merely passing legislation I disagree with), and society has to replace it or face decline.