Over time this would have evolved to include the pursuit of power and prosperity to the extent that they are necessary for a sustainable level of survival where one might feel secure enough to turn their mind to other things, such as seeking the larger context of it. This would mean moving beyond survival as an end in itself because you have come to realize that survival in and by itself is essentially meaningless unless it is seen as a means to an end.

(Survive, not because of the creature we are, but because of the creature we are going to be once we are able to release the potential within ourselves. The difference is between accepting the status quo and believing we can be better than that and living our lives accordingly.)

Being able to make that determination is the unique property of human beings as no other creature on this planet is capable of this. We have been given the choice to either live our lives primarily in response to the instinctive needs  we share with our fellow creatures  – and that would be primarily concerned with survival – or to  recognize them for what they are and reach beyond them and unlock the potential that resides within the human genus.

But true human potential will never be realized unless we start taking our cue from the larger context of existence, and as much we are able to determine it within the confines of our day to day experiences.  This will be a question of the whole being larger than the sum of it parts, and the dawning realization that the whole of the cosmos is looking over our shoulder to see if we are able to do right by it.

The challenge here will be to translate experience into a language that allows the larger context to emerge so that we can all be inspired by it. This might well lead to a sense of enlightenment reflective of the fact that we are no longer driven primarily from the bottom up, but from the top down.  By this I mean that we are no longer just motivated by the most basic of  instincts, but instead by a shared sense of purpose centred on community and well-being, knowledge and ideas because survival makes no sense without it.

And so you might be driven by the need to maximize those human qualities that enhance our well-being in whatever realm you wish to consider this: emotionally, intellectually, ethically, socially, physically, and economically. Ideally, there will be a balance between these different ways of being in the world that provides evidence that – indeed – we can progress as a species towards a level of human activity that clearly aims to go beyond those actions that find their root in the need for survival at the most basic of levels.

And the difference in quality between these actions would be one of kind and not of degree, so that something new would be added to the cosmos, such as when life first occurred with the emergence of living matter, or when sentiency first arrived within living systems.  Each time these higher levels of existence came into being they were the product of ever more complex levels of material organization; in the case of the next advance on this evolutionary tract it will be a function of ever more complex levels of human knowledge and interaction that can no longer be reduced to behaviour based on survival instincts.

This doesn’t suggest, naively, we will be able to ignore our “basic” survival instincts to the extent that we consider them no longer relevant.  That would be impossible, as they are an intrinsic part of our human psyche.  However, as opposed to pursuing them for their own sake, we will know them for what they are – and attempt to manage them accordingly in the context of a more enlightened existence.