So if we were to overcome that behavior, would you say that it is part of the evolutionary plan for those species to overcome their self-destructive set-back, making the evolutionary process a lot more than a count-down to the species' extinction?
Not really, the vast majority of species never reach the capacity to self-destruct. They either evolve into different species or go extinct due to factors other than the overshoot-and-collapse cycle (it has to be noted that they actually often do both).
Overcoming the selfish behavior for the common good has been done by many species - ants, bees, etc., i.e. what we call eusocial species. The problem with those species, however, is that as far as we can tell, they do not have the capacity to evolve consciousness and develop advanced civilizations. Precisely because they are eusocial - once you confine individuals to strictly defined roles, it is very difficult to see where the cultural innovation that drives the development of civilization would come from. That view, of course, may just be the result of our human bias, after all we are the only conscious beings with a civilization we know of, but it seems more likely to be a general rule.
Speaking about humans, would you say that we have reached a stage in our evolution(social or biological) to where the movement of evolution would be acting through us if we were to consciously make the changes that are needed for our species' survival?
It does not work that way - what you have right now is a tiny number of people who are "getting it" and the vast majority who are not. Now, since "getting it" goes against the core animal instincts that drive our behavior, it take an enormous amount of effort (i.e education and training) to convert people who are not "getting it" into people who are, and it's pretty much impossible after a certain age. The entropic cost of controlling human behavior is quite high.
There are two ways for a species to avoid the overshoot-and-collapse cycle caused by inclusive fitness maximization-driven behavior is the following:
The first is the following:
1) A civilization emerges
2) The civilization develops a sufficient amount of knowledge to understand its relationship with the environment and to realize infinite growth is suicidal.
3) The small number of people who initially understand that have sufficient power to impose the corresponding behavioral changes on the rest of the population.
4) After that, through enormous amount of effort, that behavior is maintained on the cultural level. Eventually, technology may advance sufficiently to engineer it genetically, at which point the change becomes stable.
The problem here is that the maintenance of that behavior against the basic animal instincts of people is enormously entropically expensive and therefore highly unstable.
The second scenario goes like this:
1) A civilization emerges
2) The species evolves eusociality before it self-destructs
3) Meanwhile, ecological understanding develops and as eusociality has already evolved, it is fairly easy to instigate and maintain the behavioral change
The problems here is that the emergence of civilization is a fast process because it happens on the cultural level while the evolution of eusociality occurs on the genetic level and is thus several orders of magnitude slower, i.e that scenario is highly unlikely
We cannot separate the species' mind and 'will' to change from the way evolution in the universe has always been.
That's a LaMarckian misunderstanding of how evolution works - the species has no "mind" or "will" to change. It all happens on the level of how genes distribute in the population
I think once this part is cleared up, then we can agree that there does exist a potential in humans, and if you agree with this, what will it take for us to do so?
Our only chance is the first scenario I described. But the probability of it being successfully implemented is vanishingly small
I know you are saying it will take our becoming conscious "of the ultimate self-destructiveness of short-term inclusive fitness maximization-seeking behavior" but I may be asking you to get a little philosophical and speculative as to what you think it will take for humans to do so in the first place.
I already said it
Why are we so self-complacent and content enough with our state of being that we don't do anything about it?
Because it takes a lot of knowledge to figure these things out. And acquiring knowledge is expensive - it takes effort and time, which could be better spent directly maximizing inclusive fitness. That's why most people spend as much of their as possible time trying to accomplish sexual intercourse with members of the opposite sex and very few spend that time to educate themselves into these issues (which the educational system does not cover at all).
In the long term, it is hugely beneficial for the species to spend that time reading and learning instead of going to clubs trying to pick up something to fuck. But evolution does not work in the long term, it works on the current generation, at the moment.
I would like to trace back these obstacles to a root conflict. For instance, one can look at how ignorant and dumb everybody around them is and make the claim that people are dumb because they have been conditioned to be brain dead consumers by those who have capitalized on the earth's and the humans' resources.
There's an element of that. But that's not the main reason - the main reason is that, as I said, most people will only learn as much as is directly necessary for them to survive and reproduce and that issues of intraspecific competition, i.e. inclusive fitness maximization, are much more important to them than abstractions about the long-term future
But what I would like to see is tracing the issue as far back as we can so we can understand fully why we are so susceptible to this corrupt-ability.
What is it that these advertisements fill us up with that we feel to be lacking? Why do we think we are lacking image, prestige? Is this all about needing acceptance from our fellow brethren?
Basic human, i.e. animal instincts, simple as that.