Collective civilizational guilt

A Renčín cartoon in Právo's magazine on Sat. pictured a dejected intellectual surrounded by books who says that he's "tired and worn out from fighting for 30 years to save a civilization that isn't worth it." Put another way, the question might be whether our civilization deserves to survive. Is it already too decrepit, too beyond repair? If we're not willing to fight for it, or even to acknowledge what its problems are, perhaps our civilization is indeed rightfully on the way out and those with a greater Darwinian survival instinct deserve to prevail. The big problem with this thesis is that it assumes we're all collectively and equally guilty of running our civilization into the ground. We aren't, of course. The question for the intellectual in the cartoon - and for all others who profess to be working in our interests - is whether he's been fighting to save our civilization, or whether he's one of the causes of its decline.