You're conflating the desirable effect with the unhelpful externality: that we engage in activities that benefit us vs that we also scatter light into the night

You're conflating the desirable effect with the unhelpful externality: that we engage in activities that benefit us vs that we also scatter light into the night sky that does us no good and only harms us. The former is something to be proud of, that latter is something to minimize. We can still engage in our civilization while minimizing the level that we light up the sky, for example by using fixtures that send light only where we need it and not UP where it does is no good, by not using light when it's not needed (e.g. motion triggered lights, lights that are only on when activities are underway), and by being thoughtful about the spectrum of the light (blue light is poison to night vision and if we used consistent monochromatic light like LPS lamps provided you could filter all of it out with glasses). Like many other kinds of polution the sources often follow a power law where a comparatively small number of sources provide a lot of the light. All the positives of our civilizations can be met without as much lighting up the sky. ... to achieve the minimal amount of sky lightning for our level of beneficial activity requires more civilization not less. Light polution also harms wildlife. It may be the least impactful of our pollution but it's pollution none the less.