Love this! I believe the well-renowned biologist E.O. Wilson once said that to him, the most mind-blowing step in evolutionary history was the transition from unicellular to multicellular life (I apologize for forgetting where he said this). The picture he described is very similar to your words -- it is incredible that one can go from a large number of individuals which have been fine-tuned by evolution to care only about the propagation of their own genes, all the way to a cooperative multicellular structure. I agree with you that there are lessons to be learned from this!
Onwards and upwards!!