Selfishness and greed is at the heart of humanity. Just look at every lawn covering every plot of land. They are examples of pure greed. Almost no one uses parts of their lawn regularly, and so they only exist for vanity purposes.

There is a reason why many restoration and native plant proponents teach about empathy. One needs to gain empathy for plant and wildlife struggle before being able to enact change.

We could solve a lot of problems almost immediately if we had even a modicum amount of collective empathy.

It means mostly anyone can help contributing by converting part of that lawn

Native species make the most sense but there are plenty of other beneficial weeds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneficial_weed

Like a victory garden, but war of a different nature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victory_garden

To be a contrarian, perhaps the societies that prioritize selfishness end up dominating as a result.

I act with optimism, teach optimism to my children. When left to my inner thoughts however I worry about the future of our species.

Dominating? In the way a bacteria dominates a petrie dish until it exhausts all the resources and dies off?

Exactly.

I agree, not all societies are like this. However, an argument can be made that it is inherent because it is dominant.