In spite of such a fragile physique, how could the human species survive and prevail over all animal and plant species? What made it possible?

Subhuman species obtain everything required for survival and propagation, all by themselves. Man is the only animal, which depends on other (human or nonhuman) beings for a majority of his needs. This was possible because of the division of labour and the resultant specialization. Developing and managing many organizations scientifically was required as a precondition for these. Society is the largest and the most important of such organizations.

We can never be happy, all by ourselves. We cannot even tickle ourselves. Happiness increases and sorrow decreases when shared with others.

Thus, for surviving, developing and sharing our happiness and sorrow, we need the society as a framework.

Specialization provides nearly every member of the society, an opportunity to perform operationally meaningful work and to honorably earn a living, even to the handicapped people, who are therefore spared from becoming pitiable objects.

Conflict or (its civilized version, competition) is certainly an important principle of a social living. But, a society is sustained, only when competition is rationally reconciled with cooperation. Nature sustained and even today sustains life on this planet by a wonderful reconciliation of conflict and cooperation (interdependence). We must learn this lesson from nature, if we want to sustain our (human) society.

The seemingly weaker plants and animals have an important role to play in the life sustaining cycles of nature. Hence, for their protection (as a species), nature has endowed them with certain special abilities and tricks, along with imposing certain restrictions on the use of the physical strength of the powerful predator animals. They include a much lower birth rate and a high death rate (particularly in the infancy), intuitive restriction on hunting only when hungry and that too strictly for satisfying hunger only once at a time. In nature, these restrictions work through the instincts, making all nonhuman living beings, perfectly programmed bio-robots of nature, living only on the subsistence level of consumption all through the life.

The acquired content of knowledge, in the case of human beings, is much larger than the intuitive knowledge and is more dominant too. Hence, as the most privileged species, we have to consciously accept some self-imposed restrictions on our behaviour, for the sustenance of the society, which protected us from the cruel principle of natural selection and of nature, which is a source of life and nourishment for us. The traditional wisdom of our society calls these self-imposed restrictions as Dharma. Mahabharat defines Dharma as,

Rules and regulations, which hold and sustain the society, are called Dharma.