Hashgocha Pratis, drawing some conclusions

In my previous post, I detailed the various opinions about what Hashgocha Pratis means. Now, I would like to draw some conclusions based on that. To summarise there are 2 basic contradictory approaches to Hashgocha Pratis:

1. Absolute Hashgocha - A leaf doesn't fall without it being decreed in Heaven
2. Variable Hashgocha with no Hashgocha on non-humans and little to no hashgocha on most people

I was always taught in Yeshiva that the biggest goal and life was to try and understand Hashem as best as we can. Torah learning is supposed to give us an insight into Hashem because it's his torah. The most fundamental thing that Hashem does is run the world. You would think that Judaism would at least have a clear model of how God runs the world and yet, we have 2 wildly conflicting models. This is not only a philosophical question, this question is critical to how we should live our lives. If we go with the first approach then our actions are basically meaningless and we should do as little as possible. For example, in Shu"t Mishne Halachos he is against Genetic testing (Dor Yesharim) because everything is based on Hashgacha anyway. On the other hand with approach 2 our actions are very meaningful and we absolutely have to do as much as we can. So what is a person to do?

To sum up, there is a fundamental dispute about how Hashem runs the world which has very real world implications as to how we should live our lives. How can it be that Judaism doesn't have a clear answer to this most fundamental question of how does Hashem run the world?  How can this be the source of a huge dispute?