Certainly, cooperation is a crucial part of our evolved repertoire. I wonder, though, whether a mark of higher intelligence is the undertaking of an existential, relatively egoistic or at least species-centric rebellion against the cosmic status quo. Instead of cooperating with the environment, or falling in line with some overriding equilibrium, the intelligence to understand what's really happening would afford the organism the chance to be anti-natural, to improve the flow instead of going passively with it.

In the Stone Age, we cooperated when we had to, when we had little alternative because we lacked scientific understanding. But I doubt it's a coincidence that Faustian or Luciferian arrogance, individualism, and narcissistic consumerism arose in the modern period along with the explosion of scientific knowledge.