quantum particles => atoms => chemistry => biochemistry => cellular life => multi-cellular life => intelligence
Intelligence -> societies -> technology -> ?
One has to wonder how far can emergence stretch given enough time, some kind of entropic limit probably exists but I'm just a layman, hopefully someone more knowledgeable can share if we already know a physical hard limit for emergence.
Atoms are quite stable, even though they also suffer from quantum decay; then molecules can be stable but are less stable than atoms; up the ladder to biochemistry it starts to become more unstable the more complex it gets; so on and so forth.
Stable societies might be something that humans haven't achieved yet but somewhere in the Universe some other lifeform might, each rung of the ladder will filter out the most unstable versions of it, coalescing into the emergence of the more stable versions of it. Advanced technology is very unstable for us, requiring constant maintenance by intelligent humans.
Of course, it's just food for thought :)