Richard Dawkins, in his landmark book, wrote about how the gene itself is selfish and is only interested in its own survival and propagation. I imagine this concept as a non-zero sum game. Let’s imagine a population of humans who are inhabiting a shared land, country, or island. Each is individually selfish for their own survival. In other words he/she perceives the world as a zero-sum game to survive. 

If I have to get that job, the other applicant must be rejected. If I have to get the partner of my dreams, the other lovers should lose. If I have to become the best leader, other leaders should lose. 

If we assume, everyone is inherently thinking like this, then we have N number of such people in the given area who all believe in a zero-sum attitude. However, the prosperity of the human civilisation is what I conceive to be a non-zero sum game. To continue the above example, if one of the applicant loses, he might be unemployed for a while but the company will select someone in his place. If they do not find the partner they deeply wished for, it does not harm the partner as they will find someone they themselves desire. In other words, the selfishness of a single individual is not changing the behaviour of the entire society. But, the selfishness of the society keeps the individual believing that life and all interactions in life have to be win or lose situations. That’s how the selfish gene trumps an individual and their will, making a win-win situation for the society at large. 

For the sake of sheer perversity, let’s engage in reductio-ad-absurdum. If humans destroy themselves, is it the end of life? I believe not, because there would be some species that would adapt better to the environment than humans and survive, and potentially thrive in the next thousands of years. This takes in the assumption that the solar system still remains habitable at the position of Earth. This idea is not a mere exercise in abstraction. It holds a vital essence of motivation for living. Once you realise that it isn’t about your win or loss, when you realise life will go on without you—unless God forbid a dunce world-leader brings human civilisation to a fast-tracked perishing stage—you find freedom in choosing your own values. These values are not destructive, like the ones derived from egos of winning or losing but in line with the selfish life. One becomes altruistic and appreciates life because he knows that he/she is just an ordinary player, though with transcendent thought and meta-awareness, but that does not make him more or less human. Such freedom can have two principal futures in the binary way of thinking about life and death. Either the society accepts their gift and uses it to their advantage, in which case they will live a longer life continuously improving society (as it expected), or the society and the members destroy the individual, and her martyrdom becomes the legacy that brings long-term change, or perhaps they get forgotten. The societal gene will turn out to be the selector of their fate and legacy. 

Be that as it may, the freedom gained by the individual remains undeterred as it is part of the their transcendence. Coming back to the main point of the essay, the bigger selection force of life always ends up winning, regardless of personal victories or losses at the micro-level of individual experience.  One may refer to it as a selfish gene¹, selfish society, or even selfish life in a non-anthropocentric manner. But, the point remains the same regardless of the labels. 

1– The essay, and the author, acknowledges a potential and possible misunderstanding of the original idea of the selfish gene and involves creative, abstract playing with the idea than mere exposition.