That can become a tricky question, outside this particular instance.
For example, we all have aspirations, like leaves seeking their spot in the sun, while communities find power joining together in collective goals.
As for the elemental, we tend to be reductionist, such as with math, and boiling everything down to the most irreducible parts. The problem is it tends to be descriptive, rather than explanatory. The skeleton, rather than the seed.
For example, epicycles were brilliant math, as a description of our view of the cosmos, while the crystalline spheres were lousy physics, as explanation.
We are mobile organisms, consequently we have a sequential process of perception and a narrative based culture, as stories of our journeys are the basis of our collective knowledge, so time as the point of the present, moving past to future, is foundational to who we are. The reality though, is that change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential, actual, residual.
There is no literal dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
So while we are constnatly moving down this path of life, looking for signal in the noise, we have come to assume there must be some ultimate destination. If one thing is better than the other, what is the best of all? What is that idealized state towards which our narratives are carrying us? Especially as we have become an enormous herd and if there is no common goal, we might just end up fighting each other over what there is.
The reality though, is that while we are linear and goal oriented, nature is cyclical, reciprocal and feedback generated.
It is a dichotomy of the energy driving everything on, verus the forms being manifest. The energy, as process, goes past to future, while the forms generated go future to past. As consciousness goes past to future, while thoughts and emotions go future to past.
The energy drives the wave, while frequency and amplitude are the information derived from the forms of the undulations rising and falling.
Galaxies are energy radiating to infinity, while form coalesces to equilibrium. Both entropic and diametrically opposed.
We have the digestive, respiratory and circulatory systems processing the energy driving us on, while the central nervous system sorts through the information precipitating out. The gut/heart, versus the head. The anarchy of desire, versus the tyranny of judgement.
The fact is that all our desires and the ideals we derive from them, cannot be fulfilled. We can't have our cake and eat it too. Not every acorn gets to be an oak tree. If we don't do some of the selection, nature does it for us.
So while common goals are useful for unifying large societies, the overall effect is that it becomes a race and we destroy the world, fighting over who wins. The reason life is so diverse and complex, is that in the larger system, the ecosystem in which organisms and species exist, doesn't have one goal. It's more a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, where what works best in one situation, doesn't work in other situations. Positive feedback becomes negative feedback.
Consider efficiency, the mantra of the modern world. Which is to do more with less. So the ideal of efficiency would be to do everything with nothing.
Thus our goal driven entities go from start to finish, future to past, while the larger system responds by enabling those best able to function within what is left by the previous cycle. The future becomes a reaction to the past, rather than a continuation of it.
I wrote an essay, taking this out somewhat;
https://medium.com/predict/peeling-the-paradigm-1ceab7e774b0
