The Hidden Brain Loop That Keeps Causing Civilization to Collapse

We are very clearly at a divergence point. The fork in the road ahead of us is this: Will we learn from the collapse of civilizations before us, or will we continue to fall into the same trap, watching society crumble, implode and reset once again?

And for that matter—what is keeping humanity locked in these cycles of rise and collapse in the first place? Furthermore, what keeps us as individuals locked in patterns that don’t serve us, even when we know better? When we want better?

What keeps us—both individually and collectively—repeating cycles of avoidance, sabotage and collapse? Why do we, as a species with extraordinary intelligence and endless innovation, find ourselves circling the same ruins?

Civilizations rise, fall, and rise again, each time believing we’ve finally moved past the mistakes of the last... only to recreate them under new names and worse weapons.

We tell ourselves the problem is political, ideological, or cultural. We blame systems, parties, religions, generations. And on the surface, it looks like those things are the issue. But none of them are the root.

The root is neurological. Beneath every culture and institution, underneath every argument and emotional spiral, there is a very old structure. Older than language. Older than logic. Older even than civilization itself.

It lives inside your brain. It sits just above the brainstem, and it's called the amygdala.

The amygdala is about 300 million years old. It evolved to keep you alive in a world where threats were constant and survival was never guaranteed. It doesn’t reason or reflect. It doesn’t care whether you’re fulfilled or aligned.

It only asks one question: “Is this familiar?”

If the answer is yes, it interprets that familiarity as safety, even if the familiarity is painful. Even if you are miserable. Even if it’s toxic. Even if it’s killing you. Even as society fails in front of our eyes.

The amygdala would rather keep you in a familiar hell than risk the unknown, because—through the long arc of evolution—it learned that the unknown might mean death. So, it clings to old habits and loops in cycles of self-sabotage, convincing you that staying stuck in the familiar is somehow safer than stepping into the unknown.

The amygdala isn’t evil. It’s doing what it was designed to do: keep you alive. Nevertheless, it doesn’t understand the world we live in now.

Back then, unfamiliar things did often mean danger. A strange sound might’ve been a predator stalking you from the woods. A new food could’ve been poisonous, and just stepping out into the world could've meant death in any number of ways. Therefore, deviating from the known path could get you killed.

So, for millions of years, evolution favored those who reacted quickly to the unknown—not by exploring it, but by avoiding it. Over time, that survival response became hardwired, and not through conscious thought but through repetition. The cautious, the reactive, the avoidant—they survived. And their wiring became the template.

This is how fear of the unknown became biology. It wasn’t a mistake, but it’s no longer enough. Still, even if that’s not what we want, it’s what the brain knows.

This amygdala loop governs not just personal decisions like staying in a job that depletes you or a relationship that suffocates you, but collective ones too. For years, I stayed in a toxic marriage—even after I knew it was damaging my health—because the fear of starting over, of not getting to see my kids every day, or of having to do everything on my own (even though I already was), felt too uncertain, and thus, too overwhelming. That’s how powerful and persuasive the amygdala's survival programming can be. The failure to evolve past this hardwiring keeps civilization locked in inevitable cycles of collapse because, as strange as it sounds, collapse is familiar.

That’s why people dig their heels in when challenged. Why institutions resist change. We saw this during the height of the pandemic, when scientific guidance changed and entire populations resisted—not because the new information was wrong, but because it wasn’t familiar.

The shift triggered panic. Fear shouted louder than logic, and that fear didn’t just cause confusion—it bred division. People turned on one another, not because they wanted to be enemies, but because their brains interpreted differing views as threats. And it's still happening, arguably even more now than before. Disagreement is interpreted as danger, and opposing viewpoints become battle lines. That’s why we treat each other like enemies instead of allies, even when we all want the same things: safety, connection and peace.

We’re not running from tigers anymore. Yet we still build our societies as if danger lurks around every corner. Then, we project that danger onto those whom we don't know, onto that which we don't understand. Instead of trying to understand better, or learn about people and things we don't know, our amygdala says, "danger, stay away," triggering our fight or flight mechanisms.

We hoard. We isolate. We compete. We blame. We govern and teach from a primitive brain that was never meant to hold much complexity. So, everything is simplified into safe or unsafe, same or other, us or them.

And the worst part? Even when another part of us sees it happening, even when that quiet inner voice whispers, “This isn’t right…there must be more than this," we often ignore it.

Why? Because the panic feels more familiar, and thus, more real.

That voice lives in the prefrontal cortex. That’s where reflection, intuition, and higher awareness reside.

But the amygdala speaks first. It reacts faster, and louder. It floods the body with urgency, shutdown, fear and pain until the quieter, more evolved voice gets drowned out.

That’s why we stay in the job we hate. Why we vote on party lines, based on ideology rather than policy. Why we don’t set clear, healthy boundaries. Why we don’t attempt to bridge divides. It's why we don’t change…until the suffering becomes unbearable.

And even then, the loop always tries to pull us back. This isn’t a flaw. It isn’t a personal failure. It’s a program.

And if we don’t realize we’re running it, it will shape our lives—and every decision we make—without us ever knowing it was there.

The implications of this are staggering, and if you take a look around, you can see its imprint everywhere. It means we are building economies, systems, and futures on top of a glitch. It means that parents, doctors, world leaders, and societal architects are operating from ancient panic-loop hardware, not calm clarity.

We are building from fear. And fear doesn’t just stagnate, it decays. Eventually, it cannibalizes the very thing it was trying to protect.

This is why civilizations collapse. This is why humans build beautiful things… and then destroy them. From the fall of Rome to the disintegration of ancient Mesopotamia, history shows us that each society collapsed not only from external pressures, but from an inability to adapt internally. Corruption, hoarding, tribalism, resistance to change...all fear-based behaviors amplified through systemic repetition. It’s not that we’re unworthy of peace, it’s that we haven’t yet learned to interrupt the pattern so we can consciously choose peace.

The brain views peace as dangerous because we have never known it. Not on a collective scale. So, we sabotage every effort to achieve it.

The amygdala doesn’t just protect us from the unknown, it protects us from pain too. But integrating the lessons of our past requires that we feel the pain of them. And if we don’t, we’re doomed to repeat those lessons over and over again, until we collapse.

We must feel through the past in order to choose the future. We can learn to notice the loop. We can recognize when fear isn’t truth, but just momentum. And in that pause, we can choose differently.

That’s the work. That’s the shift. That’s healing, and we are ALL meant to do it, collectively. That doesn't mean becoming someone new…it means remembering we were never just the fear to begin with.

If this feels familiar—not the fear, but the truth underneath it—you’re not alone. You’re remembering, and remembering isn’t just emotional. It’s neurological.

After my own battle with trauma and recovery, I wrote The Best of Us Is the Last of Us, Rise: The Awakening, the first installment of the Drakaina Blood Saga. It’s a story about the pain of remembering, and what it takes to interrupt the loop that leads to collapse.

Set in a fractured fantasy world, it follows a woman who awakens, stripped of her memory, as her world stands on the edge of destruction. She has a choice: survive in fear…or rise beyond it.

But rising requires one thing: remembering. And remembering hurts.

Writing is my purpose. Choosing to make a living from it meant facing my own fear, my own pain and suffering. But I believe what we’re facing now isn’t just about good or bad ideas, it’s about whether we recognize that fear is still running the show.

Want the book? Visit my website to purchase direct: www.anthonyhalligan.com

Can't afford it right now? Email me and my wife at elizabethrohasean@gmail.com, and we’ll send you a copy. No questions asked.

Because remembering, and healing the fractures that are driving humanity towards collapse, matters more to me than sales.

The future is still unwritten. And remembering might just be the way we save it.

Be the light,

Anthony Halligan

#BreakTheCycle, #CivilizationCollapse, #NeuroscienceOfFear, #RememberToRise, #AwakeningHumanity, #FearVsTruth, #CollectiveHealing, #RiseAboveFear, #HumanBehavior, #TheLoopEndsHere