Against a background of random variation, the process takes place within some body of constraints and stabilising influences. It is neither pure order nor pure chaos, but a kind of competitive game played between the two. Our ultimate fate, from this point of view, is Heat Death, a state in which all temperature variations have evened out as heat is transferred from hot bodies to cool ones. Nothing interesting happens and everywhere looks just like everywhere else. Tourism is having a similar effect on human culture.
Life appears to contradict the second law of thermodynamics.
But there are so many legal loopholes in the second law that we need not worry too much that it may rule out our own existence. Comforting as that may be, it doesn't explain why the chaos in the universe doesn't just wipe us out, or why we don't organise our world so successfully that nothing unpredictable ever happens. I need a word to capture what I have in mind. Out of deference to the second law, let me call it a negentrope. It has inherent stability of structure, but not so stable that it can't change at all.