If humans truly feel motivated to maximize options, a priest should be able to counsel an individual on how to increase options in life, even if neither person believes in evolution. Ultimately though, the argument comes back to evolution, and this leads to the second theory. It is true that populations modify by favored individuals passing on DNA, but this only explains the mechanisms of how populations modify, not why they do. Processes of selection and adaptation apply to all populations, but other factors will cause one population to evolve into butterflies, and another into polar bears. In the new theory we will call the factors constraining a population to evolve in a particular direction a fitness pathway .
Humans say, evolved along a pathway maximizing adaptation to bipedal life on the plains of Africa.
And although they do not call it that, researchers such as Steven Pinker effectively use a plains of Africa or hunter and forager pathway, as their model of human evolution. The problem with this local pathway model is that though humans evolved for life in Africa, they were able with little modification to also live in mountains or the Arctic. Plus humans whose ancestors evolved for primitive life, within a short time developed art, poetry, and culture. The same minds that evolved to be good hunters and foragers, also mastered string theory. The same hands that evolved to pick berries were delicate enough to perform brain surgery.