It seems to me that our universe has a single mission, which is to organize all of the particles into one complex, efficient system. If you think about the history of the universe, it seems to constantly move in that direction. DNA was one of the great ‘inventions’ in that regard, because of variation in organisms that it can produce. When people talk about how the goal of living things is to have offspring who will have offspring who will have offspring, I think this is a very narrow view. Inclusive genetic fitness only matters if reproduction is leading to progress towards the larger goal. If humans stop contributing towards that goal, they will get purged (which would mean we became ‘unfit’ as a species).
If the ultimate goal isn’t to survive and reproduce, but rather, to build increasingly complex, efficient systems, then one might predict that humans (as the most successful living things so far) would value people who contribute towards building complex, efficient systems. Whether it was cars, railroad, phones, governments, computers, facebook — contributing to the building of a system is a good way to get rich and/or famous (picture Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, or our ‘founding fathers’).
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The above are just thoughts based on conversations with Charlene and Mengsen
Stephen J. Gould argued that evolution is more of a random walk… there is a minimum level of complexity in living things, beyond which you can’t simplify any further. But there is no apparent maximum complexity, so, over time, by happenstance, a number of species become quite complex. This was in his book “Full House”.
In the same book he also said that it is not the Age of Man, nor was it ever the Age of Mammals or the Age of Reptiles, etc. In his view, it always has been, and always will be, the Age of Bacteria. Humans do fascinating things, but the planet belongs to bacteria.
Just playing devil’s advocate….