Currently, humans don't work that way. I mean, sure, we want to survive, and will do a lot of nasty things for it, but if you actually internalize nihilism, crass self-interest, and convention as your moral foundation, then the result will NOT be goodness or truth or beauty. To win, you have to be aware of the mundane roots of things without celebrating them.
See, e.g., Gall's Law and/or Goodhart's Law.
No, currently we don't. If we want our values to survive, then we must win. If we want to win, we have nothing else to place our values on besides this "apparently barren soil".
Think of it as the converse of the following Terry Pratchett dialog between Susan and Death in Hogfather:
"All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
"REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISIN...
This is our monthly thread for collecting these little gems and pearls of wisdom, rationality-related quotes you've seen recently, or had stored in your quotesfile for ages, and which might be handy to link to in one of our discussions.