Janet,

CIVILIZATION

While I'm far from knowing who's behind what, I lean to Aduku's notion of the trajectory toward memory loss. 

I haven't personally read Oswald Spengler, but I've been hearing and reading about him for decades, 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Spenglermoreso recently. 

In his theory of civilizations, they all rise and fall, but group into major types, of which ours is one. Ours is called the Faustian age.  The Faustian age is concerned with endless progress--rather hubristic of it given a finite earth. A theory of progress is a theory of disparagement of the past. So our entire civilization disparages the past, and is inherently out of step with earth's natural resources.

SIMPLIFICATION

Given the confusing tangle of issues we face, it helps to single one out--a "master" issue, a mother of all issues--that is strategically placed to make other critical issues go in the desired direction.

If a major issue is the loss of memory, then preserving the built, cultural and natural landscapes will keep us eternally grounded in history, historical values, and historical (simpler, more energy-appropriate) technology. Then the focus would be on THINGS and PLACES, and not on people, who, with their myriad of confusing, distracting and divisive issues, can only work against their own essential needs. 

GENDER

By far the grandest and most determinative issue in the world is the gendering of the human race as masculine, as in the term "Man" to define the species. This is so deep and challenging an issue that the human mind shuts it out. In my case, it helps me to see that there is NOTHING normal and acceptable about the status quo. That leads one to an unheard of level of radical thought.