2117 AD: An alien research on earth's ruins

Since mankind’s occupation of the earth, by beating rest of the species through his main faculty, brain, everything has changed, from wooden wheels to spaceships, Gods to just weather phenomena, except one thing, happiness. Situation is the same. In fact, modern man is far unhappy than the ancient one. Simple reason is the use of logic and science for creation and destruction at the same time. One step forward, one step backward: Life and death overlapping. Where will we go? The net result is zero. So we stand at the same place where we started from. Medical research is doing wonders to beat mortality, overcome diseases, lessen pains, and increase the quality of life. One step forward, accepted. But then the destructive face is no less on innovation. Nuclear weapons which can wipe out whole of the earth, chemical weapons, missiles, warships, guns, bullets. One step backward. You make deadliest weapons to take as many lives as possible. Then you contrive the best means to save lives through bullet proofs, bunkers, shelters, helmets, surgeries and medicines. Ease of life through modern utilities, one step forward of course. Destruction of environment, one step backward. Doesn’t seem to make much sense to me. It’s simply going nowhere. It has been just hot pursuit. Ever since we surged ahead on the path of civilization, it has been always a rampant, mad rush to go ahead, at whatever cost. There has never been a civilazional pause, a hiatus, a break to ponder over, to think about the costs we have paid. A look back and around and calculation of the future. All civilizations nurtured the relentless thrust, to march on, with full force. Mind you, march on and on, the storm, the fire, these cannot go forever. Such hot-pursuit race cannot sustain itself. It has to come to an end. It’s as per the law of science. If you run forever, you will collapse. So one has to stop somewhere. Unpaused progress ends in a disaster. It just isn’t sustainable. In genetically ingrained and socially ordained hot pursuit, have we ever thought of contriving means of systemic pause and rest, for ourselves, for countries, for this planet itself? Only rest, peace, calm and love are sustainable, because these are not burning with the fiery energy. So before we continue rampantly and dive headlong into the abyss across the precipice, cannot we learn to devise civilizational pause, when this planet earth gets a holiday, for some time, its lungs getting a lease of life, its freshwater bodies getting lesser pollutants? Just like we have carbon cut quotas, cannot we have population cut quotas? It will help. It will save the earth from human ant-swarms, who will ultimately eat the environment itself that sustains them. Cannot everything be slowed down at regular intervals to save the critically exponential stats from nose-diving into deathtrap? Long before a superior, antagonistic extra-territorial life overpowers us, or a rogue planet crashes into the earth, or sun explodes, we will surely destroy ourselves long before any such eventuality. And when that happens, some alien researchers will sigh with wonderment, looking at our ruins and archaeological remains, much like we marvel at the ruins of ancient human civilizations such as Harappa, Egypt and Babylon, and think and research about the causes that brought about the downfall.