With that, being happy does not seem to be a universal quality of life; some would even posit that the opposite is true (ask Gautama B.)
I don't see humans completely overcome their biological nature any time soon, if ever.
That's just what species are selected for. If you have two competing populations and one multiplies and expands just slightly better than the other, everything else equal, then that one will eventually outcompete the slower one.
But it does not have to be that way. Humans are the top predator, so no competition here. We could make do with limiting expansion if we chose to. It's still life, but without this "quality" that you seem to consider a necessity.
We have no predators but we do have a lot of existential threats. The more we spread out the more chances we have of surviving. If we sit on our hands and stay put we’ll wind up like the dinosaurs one way or another.
Solving world hunger does not need expansion. Stopping climate change does not need expansion. Preventing the upcoming antibiotics crisis does not need expansion. To the contrary, expansion makes all those things worse or has even started them in the first place.
This problem is twofold. First is that much food is produced far from many poorly nourished people. This problem is totally solvable by modern transport. There are enough charity donations to prevent hunger everywhere.
Second, and most importantly, it's the social structure what prevents ending the hunger where the hunger still is. People prevent production and distribution of food in order to keep the social structures where they are on top, or are fighting to be on top. They themselves are not hungry, and don't care about the rest much.
Not intentionally, but we've managed to create societies where reproduction is extremely costly in every conceivable way and are even working to convince people that reproduction is outright tyrannical, sexist, and environmentally genocidal.
The instinct will certainly remain, but population decline seems inevitable the way things are going. Even a few decades from now, the human breadbaskets of the developing world adopt the anti-natalist systems we have in the developed world.
If the argument is that somehow the former is more environmentally friendly, then I don’t understand why we should accept dystopia for an uncaring god.
Humans are exceptional in this regard as that can expand beyond the limits, and at the expense of, all other known species. Humans are also exceptional in that they could extinguish themselves, either by choice on their own folly.
Of course. But they reach a limit. Only one species is able to exploit resources, and the biosphere, to its own ends. Agriculture, mining, and technological advancement are peculiar to humans. All of these permit us to live longer, with fewer setbacks, and in environments no other animals can survive (space, and soon other planets). Are these not exceptional traits?
We can also engineer a virus, or deploy strategic weapons that could wipe out our entire species (and a bunch of others). Is that not exceptional?
But some animals have agriculture (ants?) and some plants exploit metals in the soil (phytomining)! Still, Sapiens are the champs.
And it's such a banal obvious claim I'm making, and yet it's being downvoted to oblivion. I can't imagine cane toads doing anything I mentioned.. or even ants having some sort of hegemonic control over the fate of all other species.
If tomorrow all ants disappear then most land-oriented ecosystems would just collapse.
We humans are having so egoistically anthropocentrical world views that it's not even funny anymore.
> Humans are also exceptional in that they could extinguish themselves, either by choice on their own folly.
Could you imagine ants finding a method to annihilate themselves? I don't claim that animals are unintelligent, but we are unique in our ability to create technology to achieve almost any goal, no matter goal's 'sapience'.
> If tomorrow all ants disappear then most land-oriented ecosystems would just collapse.
I don't dispute this, but it's completely orthogonal to my claim. Humans have disrupted the biosphere in a manner that is unprecedented since when meteor strikes and seismic events were still shaping earth
It's not very hard for ants to collectively commit suicide.