A quick reference to Asimov's Foundation... A thinking dude sees the inevitable collapse of the galactic Empire in the little things. The loss of (sufficient quantity of people with) knowledge about how to maintain current level of technology, for example.
And that dude strives to build a foundation that could... lesson the period of the coming dark ages. Not prevent the coming of the dark ages, for it is inevitable. And the dark period could take... lifetimes. Let's hope in our case the scales are all much smaller.