Evolutionary tendencies: some thoughts and questions

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Recently I finished reading Ursula Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness and was struck by a passage:

{The two main characters are crossing the frozen northern wastes of the planet Winter; one is a disgraced official of one country, the other (the narrator) is an emissary from a galactic community of societies. The native speaks of how he and some friends explored the wilds of the ice when they were young.]

“What for?”

“Curiosity, adventure.” He hesitated and smiled slightly. “The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life,” he said, quoting one of my Ekumenical quotations.

“Ah, you were consciously extending the evolutionary tendency inherent in Being; one manifestation of which is exploration.” We were both well pleased with ourselves…

The Left Hand of Darkness, p. 227

I immediately wondered what the other manifestations of the evolutionary tendency of Being might be. Le Guin gives us Exploration, seeking newness, seeking the unknown to make it known.

The first two ideas that came to mind were Expression and Explanation, just to continue the Ex- motif.

Explanation is Being’s tendency to find patterns in what we explore. The constellations, the Periodic Table, primary/secondary colors, melodies, etc., all are patterns we’ve discovered.

Expression is our ability to make patterns from what we find, to Make the Thing That Is Not.

That’s when I bogged down. What other manifestations might there be? Is it possible to develop an all-encompassing list of attributes of Being?

I thought about Union, both with others and with Being itself, but that’s as far as my philosopher’s brain would take me without a lot of work.

Any ideas?