Definitely

>and is in someway required as part of the foundation for civilization

I disagree. The foundation of a civilization is energy and how much energy a civilization can use. See the Kardashev scale: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale

I'm trying to say that something could exist that is so fundamentally different from us that it really doesn't care about our existence. Right now, the biggest organisms on earth are fungi. There are some truly enormous fungi. Imagine a fungus or set of fungi that start converting radiation directly to mass for itself to grow. It could expand to surround its local sun. In certain ways, this fungus is more advanced than us, but it would eat us alive without noticing it was doing anything wrong, because it isn't capable of having the thought required to have morality.