Eh… While I am conflating usefulness to the individual with natural selection here, there’s a reason: natural selection favors fitness of the group, which does not always mean death. An group more successful in a given niche, will end up outcompeting others, even if all else stays equal, creating selection pressure. Remember, selection pressure does not equal death to the species (sometimes not even individuals). Sometimes, it just means that a different niche gets contested. Other times, it just means you have less kids.
Case and point, invasive species. While an invasive species will tend to upset the balance of an ecosystem, and tend to kill the exant species of any given niche, the displaced species can and will adapt, though this is most common in larger, generalist species with aome plasticity anyway. The hard part about adding the examples (besides feral cats vs foxes and other small ambush predators) is that the displaced species tends to already be under pressure due to human interactions before we notice it happening. Honestly, this is further mediates by the differences between an invasive species and a introduced species which from the times I worked in conservativion is more the direct impact of a given species.
Even then, natural selection is based on passing on genes. An organism that lives a full life, but is unable to successfully reproduce, will still be an evolutionary dead end, while one that has kids who then go on to have kids, even if the individual itself dies quickly, still will have been successful. It’s why self sacrifice (which from an organisms point of view is death) has still been independently evolved many times, because so long as the likelyhood of a successful next generation is increased, then the gene is passed on. Look up books about gene centered evolution (The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is out of date, somewhat innacurate, but still an awesome read if you enjoy science literature. Just… Grain of salt.)
Tldr, natural selection is based on fitness, and fitness does not mean death to any species, if it can adapt.
Okay, so back to humans specifically.
Now, the reason why I had been focusing on emotional intelligence? If we use generated wealth as a very general indicator of fitness (and yes, I mean general, I am well aware of the the fact that there are dozens of general issues with this setup, but it’ll work as a vague generalization), the majority of the fitter individuals are trained from a young age to understand social signals. Is this an absolute requirement? Not at all. But we still see a great deal of the wealth, and therefore opportunity, in the hands of those that tend towards successfully interacting (positively or negativity) with other people, I.E. celebrities, business managers, political figures.
So, why was (and still am) I using wealth as an indicator? Wealth provides opportunity. Whether this opportunity is in connections with others (so you don’t have to directly know someone, a friend of a friend may, and this is interestingly enough there for all tight knit communities, so it’s far from just the rich), in second chances (every kid who’s got a million dollar investment from parents/close family in their startup), or training/outsourcing in a given requirement. Any combination of the above can help you get ahead, but wealth may be substituted to provide one (or more) of those that are deficient.
Still a vast oversimplification of complex social, political and economic interactions thats about guarenteed to start a heated discussion? Absolutely. Useful enough to vaguely model for our needs? I hope so, given that specific cultural contexts will change how any given model weighs more than the basics.
… That, and while I know enough in socialogy and economics to be dangerous, I am in no way an expert, so I would really rather not go beyond what I know.
And sorry, I want to write so much more on this, but at that point it kind of needs it’s own thread for the essay.