Thanks.

If the universe is the totality of all natural things, we're part of the universe, but we don't represent that whole because we're an emergent part that happens to be distinctly anti-natural (e.g. anti-entropic, like the rest of organic life).

Even the averageness of humankind isn't transferred to every human individual. This was Schopenhauer's point when he said that the good of the species calls for sacrifices of individuals. The evolutionary needs of sexual reproduction often conflict with what the individual wants.

In any case, yes we participate in humankind and in the universe. But there are also oppositions here which call for emergent levels of explanation. Our behaviour at large is anti-natural, and it's crude to apply generalizations about humankind to the mindset and behaviour of each individual. Some mental maps and models are more helpful than others, depending on the context.

My point about nothing mattering to the universe is that there's a great conflict between mindlessness and the minded. That's the existential and aesthetic root of our deliberate onslaught against the wilderness. We're horrified by nature's inhumanity/mindlessness/monstrous indifference and amorality. We assert our life/humanity/individuality against our antithesis. In one sense we're part of nature, but in another we're the part that goes its own way like a black hole that's also greatly at odds with the natural order. The universe creates and destroys itself.