I dream a scientific experiment

...in last night's dream, some scientist, wanting to prove a moral point about life - that it is inherently cruel and competitive - was setting up an experiment, reducing the light in a gigantic greenhouse so that only one plant would be able to flourish: but which? The hypothesis was that the most aggressive, most hardy, most ruthless plant would rise to the top of the heap, hoarding the light and leaving the rest to die. Environmental activists were expected to be outraged, but they had their own reading of the experiment, their own way of looking at it. Can't remember for the life of me what it might have been.