I recall a remark Plato made somewhere, about intellectual "brainchildren." Instead of having biological kids, we may treat the products of our minds as our children. So we protect them with the same vigor as parents protect their sons and daughters. I suspect that that's why we attribute such profound meaning to civilization, because it's the offspring of our minds.

Aren't you proud of things you've made besides your children (assuming you have the latter)? I've written a lot of articles, and it's easy for me to think of them as my brainchildren. It's the same with art, craft, cuisine, or anything else we produce with discipline, imagination, and so forth. We inject ourselves into our artificial constructs, so that the use of them becomes second nature, and they become extensions of our mind and will.