[yyyk]

That's because your causation is very different from many past peoples. They viewed reality as very affected by divine forces and the 'natural' event as divine intervention (directly or indirectly).

City got destroyed by a meteorite? You view this as an accident. They think 'better remove whatever made the Heavens upset before we are smote again and again with meteorites or worse'.

Now, since the government controlled just about everything in theory (few limits on power), the government is held responsible. People start spreading the notion that perhaps the government needs to be altered to people more pleasing to Heaven, and from there we get civil wars, rebellions, etc. Which can lead to more disasters (badly maintained dams for example, because the civil war takes too many resources away from maintenance) and so on. It's a cycle of instability every ancient government wanted to avoid.