> Then it dawned on me that the survival of the species is not aligned with the survival of an individual.

The selfish genes control, and their survival is not perfectly aligned with either the individual or the species. If aging becomes too slow, adaptation slows, and successful genes become more rare and their propagation slows. Genes are replicators, replicators need turn-over to replicate, and greater age means slower turn-over.

It may be that the advent of cultural replicators have decreased the optimal turn-over rate of genetic replicators, but they don't know that.