Replace “survival” with “reproduction advantage”, and you can cover appreciation of beauty and a lot of counter-individual-survival values. Unfortunately, there’s no way to test the theory, and some of the explanations start to feel like just-so stories made to fit the theory rather than independent observations to update on.
I would rather specify that it’s not just ths survival of the individual, but “survival of the value”. That is, survival of those that carry that value (which can be an organism, DNA, family, bloodline, society, ideology, religion, text, etc) and passing it on to other carriers.
Replace “survival” with “reproduction advantage”, and you can cover appreciation of beauty and a lot of counter-individual-survival values. Unfortunately, there’s no way to test the theory, and some of the explanations start to feel like just-so stories made to fit the theory rather than independent observations to update on.
I would rather specify that it’s not just ths survival of the individual, but “survival of the value”. That is, survival of those that carry that value (which can be an organism, DNA, family, bloodline, society, ideology, religion, text, etc) and passing it on to other carriers.