But then our desire to achieve more and more leads us to destroy other species and the environment. We don't just want to 'survive', we don't just want to be 'animals', we want to be more than that, so we build, we create, more and more, we want to be better than, we fight to be on top, at all costs. If it ends up destroying ourselves, then maybe we would have had a thing to learn from cockroaches.

But in fact I see that desire to achieve as nothing more than a desire to guarantee our survival.

I see the desire to be wealthy as a way to guarantee one's survival: when you have accumulated wealth, you don't have to worry about working on getting what you need.

I see the desire to be famous as a way to guarantee one's survival: when you are famous, when people love you, you are not alone, and they are there for you if you need them.

Sure people desire these things not because they consciously think that it will help them guarantee their survival, they just desire these things, just like we desire to eat, not because we consciously think that it will help us survive.

Many people who work on curing diseases wouldn't do it if they weren't paid to do so. Those who do it out of the pure desire to help others, their desire is essentially a way to help other members of the species survive. It's a desire not directed at one's own survival, but towards the survival of other members of the species. Which is still about survival.

I would agree with most of this. I think we developed the push for survival at a point in our growing awareness when we began defining, quantifying and measuring interactions to determine their value.

We recognised that there was ‘value’ in relation to the organism as distinct from ‘value’ in relation to everything else. For instance, a shark is an impressive creature that inspires awe in many respects - yet an interaction with one is potentially fatal for the organism.

From this awareness of conflicting value we formulated a sense of ‘self’, and began a dialectic with the environment - this sense of ‘other’ - that motivated our actions of fear, violence, domination and oppression.

What allowed us to increase awareness, interconnection and achievement in spite of this was initially religion. By anthropomorphising this increasingly impressive sense of ‘other’, we were able to interact with the environment/god(s) with reverence, wonder, awe and courage, to strive for understanding and knowledge of our surroundings and each other, and potentially develop in wisdom and right judgement. Of course, we didn’t always - our sense of value in relation to the organism/community/ideology/species won out more often than not, unfortunately. But we made progress.

This dialectic eventually split into religion, philosophy and science as we developed an awareness of infinite interaction - a way to understand and connect with the universe well beyond our own brief physical existence. But as reasoning became the dominant way to increase awareness, we retreated back to value-based awareness, and began to glorify survival above all else.

By re-uniting and balancing science, religion and philosophy as methods of increasing awareness, interconnection and achievement, I think we may learn (among other things) that we’ve distorted our awareness of ‘value’ in order to mask our vulnerability, our nakedness. And that it’s not a will to survive, or to maximise individual or even collective wealth, power, independence, fame, autonomy or accolade that ultimately enables ‘success’.

I have two points here, one more petty then the other, first I think you are taking the words “will to survive” too literally and, basically out of context. Read the whole song, it is about achievement. It’s about having an unbreakable will and defeating your opponents or achievement, it is celebrating your believes. The first verse all he is saying he is I survived hard times and now that I did I'm going to go achieve. Very simply put that's the whole song. No where in the song does it imply to forgo success for survival.

Now, my more legitimate point is that I do agree with you in a way but I would challenge what you mean by achieve, contribute, or matter. I personally think that living ethically should be more important than either success or survival. I would rather just survive ethically, then achieve, contribute, or, matter in way that is untrue to myself. For example, if I owned a brewery and was making just enough to survive and there was a brewery next door and a computer hacker came to me and said I can lie and tarnish the other breweries name on the internet and it will run them out of business and you will then grow and get both customer bases and become more successful, I would say no. I would rather just make my living in a way I deemed ethically right and take the chances of whatever happens next. Also I would rather die than survive in a way that is untrue to myself. If I was in the military and was told to go kill a village of innocent people or I would be killed, I would choose death, because surviving in a world that I'm actively hurting is the worse option. I suppose my point is that I would be more critical of achieving, contributing, or mattering because there are plenty of ways to do that negatively, and if you have true peace in just surviving then that is also a fulfilling life.

There are much more valid goals to strive for, and I have listed some of them. — Ilya B Shambat

Priorities. Don't you have to ensure that you are surviving in order to even contemplate other goals? How can you achieve other goals if you haven't ensured your survival first?

OP must read Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death. He discusses the divorce between man's bodily side, and his transcendental functions.

I have always loved that song (I remember playing it on Wii rockbound as a kid with my dad) and those song isn't so much about base survival, as it is about achievement and adaptability. That is, man can adapt to any circumstances and 'survive' them. That is a true anthropological statement-man is extremely adaptable, otherwise we wouldn't have ended up on almost all the continents/climates on Earth. But this is just one skill. I take issue with your need to disparage 'low-order life forms' they do not stand in the way of man's 'glory'. Low-order life forms as you call them-have extreme skillsets that humans do not possess and many that humans cannot even begin to imagine. Ie. a tick that can wait an upwards of eighteen years sitting silently in the same spot waiting for its prey. I struggle with the psychological, let alone physical effects of sitting for any time past ten minutes to an hour, let alone the span of almost my entire life.

I do agree that life as the existentialists pointed out, at least, a secular life must find some greater meaning that transcends it. For many, this is success, like curing a disease that can help/improve other people's lives-or wealth, which improves your own life and in many cases like famous celebrities, will make you remembered upon your death. These are just the ways 'success' has been defined by our capitalist environment. I agree with @interestedparty there are many other forms of transcending oneself to find meaning and or the 'Will to Matter', like living ethically and authentically. I too, want to live authentically-to not be silenced of my opinions, to stand up for people when it matters ect. Unfortunately this is not always possible, which is where people start feeling such great disappointment, depression, or unhappiness in their lives. On this same note, I think there is also the imperative to live 'kindly' as a form of living ethically/authentically...not kindly as in social niceties or even being polite, but rather, doing kind and helpful things for others and not expecting much in return. Like holding doors for people. Or smiling at strangers. Or picking up a snail from the middle of the sidewalk and putting it on the grass so it doesn't get stepped on; the latter sounds ridiculous, but even if you don't hold that snails have some form of sentience/value, its the attitude that matters. When I work children's camps in the summer I always make a big show of pausing wherever we are going and doing this. Showing that being kind and observant matters.

Priorities. Don't you have to ensure that you are surviving in order to even contemplate other goals? How can you achieve other goals if you haven't ensured your survival first?

You're right. Base survival is pretty important (Maslows hierarchy of needs)-I get a whole let less concerned with being kind or authentic when I'm extremely ill, or grieving, or otherwise consumed with my own pain and suffering. You could say then that the 'Will to Matter' is for the privileged then, those that are currently not suffering in some form. But the 'Will to Matter' can also be a way to transcend suffering, and I believe, is intrinsically linked to surviving. My grandmother died last year at the age of 89, not of any real health problems, but in her sleep-after months if not years of being depressed due to aging/family problems. For her, there was no more 'Will to Matter' in the Schopenhauer sense-so she stopped living. Now of course, a young and healthy person like myself, would probably not die after being depressed for months or years-but my health would certainly deteriorate ect.