Paying attention to the fluctuations of large, powerful forces that shape our lives is a pretty good survival strategy in a lot of different contexts. This has nothing to do with our ability to influence those fluctuations, it has to do with the need to react to them effectively. The more attention I pay to X, the better able I am to respond effectively when X shifts.

This is just as true for paying attention to the weather as a farmer, to paying attention to my parents as an infant, to paying attention to my government as a citizen. (Though I have far more influence in some of those cases than in others.)