Nah, we can still do worse. This is just the worse timeline.
I suppose humanity, or rather human-driven civilisations (I mean if you an alien from a glorious eternal interstellar empire -- wasssup), they must go in cycles. Human nature drives this pattern, and because human nature won't change no matter how many fancy gadgets we make for ourselves, it alwyas follows the same rhythm.
At first we struggle, to harden ourselves to persevere - to triumph against adversary. Then you begin to reap the rewards of your conquest, for it is your right, earn with sweat and blood. But then, you indulge, for it is your right, Is it not? But growth is never infinite, but wants is. As the pool of wealth becomes cluttered by the minds that want ever more, The struggle against the external changes into the internal, and that civilisation -- itself a construction of the people, collapses.
Most civilisations experienced this, some survived collapses through the shifting the heads of states, therefore absolving past resentments with them, and reuniting the people under a new master; others die -- some conquered, at the moment of their low; others simply fractured irreversibly.
I feel our present degradation stems from the fact that our "civilisation", at the greatest extend, is near-global; our economical interests are conjoined and contorted, our cultural boundaries eroded -- hell, I'm typing to you from my workplace in SEA to you, who are most likely on the other side of the globe -- and the heavier the mass, the more spectacular the impact. I think we are past the point of no return, and we are going down.
It would be wise to segregate ourselves, isolate our own systems from the ones falling the fastest, but I don't think we can. Everything we depend on has become too deeply dependent on the global system, and every twitch from a small nexus, vibrates and shakes every nerve on the network. When the whole things goes down, I really think it has to be violent, it has to be ugly.
And the saddest part, is that it will be absolutely necessary for that to happen.