What causes so many people to prefer conflict and tensions to stability and calm?
If they have no sense of accountability for their behaviour, it can be quite easy for them to be like that. If they live purely in the present, no-one is in a position to reprimand them and they like to push their luck and watch people flinch, then there you have a ripe environment for conflict and tension. If though the stability and calmness has been created through submission to oppression, then people who want to challenge that will cause conflict and tension. However they will not prefer conflict and tension, they just want to overcome the oppression.