Why can’t we see the forest for the trees? Because we can’t see the qualia for the matter. We are materially focused. Evolution has made us that way — we notice qualia, but it sends us chasing after matter. But we do have the capacity NOT to chase matter, and to hold qualia in our minds. Contemplating qualia allows us to conceptualize ideas and to cultivate ideals. That is, we can conceive of a forest, which is an idea; the trees are the matter. Cultivating the idea of a forest, and turning it into an ideal, we come up with something more than a forest — a collection of ecological niches. We call these ecological niches ecosystems. Ecosystems consist of individual landscapes, balanced in harmony.
This is why we can’t see the forest for the trees, because we can’t see the ecosystems for the landscapes.