Well that went full circle faster than expected. We could be living on 1-2 other planets and 3-4 moons. We're not, because we're stupid. We're still here dealing with every other stupid human and animal. Conflating a mere 300,000 years of survival as proof of not being stupid is what I would expect from.. stupid people.
I think the better take away from the evidence is that humans are really limited and have heuristics that are really exploitable. At large scales that can lead to some pretty counterproductive behavior.
The interesting thing is that some of those same heuristics can be really adaptive at smaller scales. So the question is where is the balance and what sort of systems lead to better global behavior.
I don't think your example of living on other planets is correct (at least as homo sapiens, seeding lifeforms and maybe even intelligent life is another thing), but I think it is in the right direction of that there is so much more that is achievable but we don't have the social co-ordination to approach it in a way that is much better that a random-walk.
Large scale co-ordination and sense making of actual reality is hard.
This is why religions have survived the fall of kings, empires and nations. When system starts collapsing under the weight of its ever building contradictions, they allow for stabilization, repair and continuity.
But with the arrival of the printing press and then the internet info tsunami, those older stories and rituals (which act as sync mechanism for large groups over different time frames - daily-weekly-yearly touch points) start loosing influence. This is happening without a good story/sync replacement (see Philosopher Charles Taylor's The Secular Age).
So look to HBO/Netflix/Pixar or the WWE. One is interactive almost real time narrative/emotion resonance/ritual engineering and the other is a deeper slower process. Those are the kind of spaces where potential breakthroughs will come from. Not the totally clueless science or tech world.
