Thanks for your effort to revisit 2001. Reminds me of Kubrick's refusal to go into questions that basically come down to "Master of creation, can you tell me what the movie was all about?" Putting things into words is such a limited tool, lead to discussions about semantics and interpreting. Kubrick did the remarkable thing of projecting / contrasting high-definition images of 'SF stuff' against a multi-interpretable, confusing backdrop / portrayal of human evolution. Usually a film director's narrative is laid over the supporting images. With 2001 it feels quite the other way around. Something a director like Spielberg (always quick to make explicit, or use voiceovers like in his film AI) does not get. What you wrote "a journey within each of us" covers it pretty much. 2001 should be 'seen' as a personal experience. Not Nietzsche, but (Jurassic World author) Michael Crichton summed it up ‘less mythical’ what humanity as a collective is dealing with.

“God creates dinosaurs. God kills dinosaurs.

God creates man. Man kills God. Man brings back dinosaurs”...

Nowadays to be completed by:

"Man creates AI. AI kills man." (question mark).

Ask yourself why Bowman was able to outsmart HAL quite primitively when he reentered the spaceship, and switched off HAL... Particularly intriguing since we no longer have a kill switch for the use of algorithms and AI. They have infested everything systemic. Cheers, Ralph