It's amazing how little value is attributed to civilization in the west today. I guess it's all the guilt and self loathing we are constantly being bombarded with. The biggest victim gets most prestige, not those who actually contribute to society. Building civilization and keeping it together requires tremendous energy. Wrecking it is almost automatic.
The second law of thermodynamics is one of the most fundamental laws of nature, having profound implications. In essence, it says this:
The second law - The level of disorder in the universe is steadily increasing. Systems tend to move from ordered behavior to more random behavior.
One implication of the second law is that heat flows spontaneously from a hotter region to a cooler region, but will not flow spontaneously the other way. This applies to anything that flows: it will naturally flow downhill rather than uphill.
If you watched a film forwards and backwards, you would almost certainly be able to tell which way was which because of the way things happen. A pendulum will gradually lose energy and come to a stop, but it doesn't pick up energy spontaneously; an ice cube melts to form a puddle, but a puddle never spontaneously transforms itself into an ice cube; a glass falling off a table might shatter when it hits the ground, but the pieces will never spontaneously jump back together to form the glass again. Many processes are irreversible, and any irreversible process increases the level of disorder. One of the most important implications of the second law is that it indicates which way time goes - time naturally flows in a way that increases disorder.
The second law also predicts the end of the universe: it implies that the universe will end in a "heat death" in which everything is at the same temperature. This is the ultimate level of disorder; if everything is at the same temperature, no work can be done, and all the energy will end up as the random motion of atoms and molecules.
To uphold order and stability we need to work against the very fabric of the universe. We need to wrest it loose and struggle to keep it. Why people don't understand this reflexively is beyond me.