I'm pretty sure human's role, in the grand scheme of things, is to generate the next step in evolution. We should do the best job we can for the universe.
It was mostly tongue-in-cheek, just to offer a different perspective. But since you ask, how should we employ our capacity to care? On fleeting comfort, or grand visions? Personally, I vote for creating a superior life form, that can carry on the long history of evolution into amazing new realms and abilities. We could be the "bacterial" precursor of an amazing new stage of evolution.
