Variation (chaos) comes from the tidal push/pull of all cumulative processes - all processes are nearly periodic (2nd law) and get slower - guaranteeing oscillator harmonics at intervals.

These intervals are astronomically convulted, but still promise a Fourier distribution of frequency: tidal effects ensure synchronization eventually, as all periods resonate eventually.

As systems are increasingly exposed to pendulums of positive and negative coherence, they will generalize for variance, and eventually for increasingly (fourier) selective filters of increasingly resiliente traits, that will generalize.

The system would eventually be increasingly resilient and eventually an awareness would develop.

Awareness of past periodic cycles would improve fitness (with or without consciousness) and eventually the mechanistic processes would be in the systems nature.

This is why we have pointless traditions, folk lore, collective unconscious artifacts, cyclical cataclysmic religions, the Fermi Paradox, the great filters...

Variation and selection are woven, but understanding how it all stems from gravity by means of nearly perioidic oscillators (spinning planets, tidal pools, celestial bodies) due to the conservation of angular momentum, due to the 3body problem.....that is what took a genius to reconcile