Evolution and technology.
Evolution is a nonteleological process. It has no "end," no directive. It is simply a description of a process that occurs, and that process is that the organisms best adapted to a particular environment will enjoy the greatest chance of survival in that same environment. It is easy to discursively address this process with falsely teleological terms, though, and discussions that attempt to explain evolution often make this mistake.
In a way, the hydrodynamic metaphor is the easiest to understand. Take a pitcher full of water and poke a hole in the bottom. The water will flow out of that bottom hole. Now if you take another pitcher and poke two holes in it, one higher than the other, the water will flow more readily out of the lower hole because of the pressure exerted on the column of water. That is, the lower you go in the fluid, the heavier all the water on top of you becomes, and so the faster the water will run out of that hole. Similarly, if you dam up water in a riverbed, it backs up and forms a lake; that water has to go somewhere, and if you route it or block it or attempt to reengineer its pathway, the water will find a way to get where pressure tells it to go.
The same can very much be said of evolutionary pressures. There are stresses exerted on organisms by their environments, by their societies, by their own metabolisms. Humans experience these same stresses in all the same ways. We are driven to find food by hunger; early humans aggregated around their food supplies, which explains the nomadic hunter/gatherer type of society that formed the basis of civilization. In dry, difficult climes, the organisms that survive are those most capable of using water prudently: the cactus stores it in its tough flesh; reptiles do not leak water through their dry, scaly skins. Humans are hard-pressed to survive in those environments by themselves because they lack these adaptations.
Humans have recently, however, learned to circumvent the need for pure physiological adaptation (and to a lesser extent behavioral adaptation) through the development of technologies. The nomadic culture was defeated by the creation and widespread adoption of agriculture. Humans moved into hostile climates by building domiciles adapted to those hostile environments--igloos to retain heat in the far north, yurts in Mongolia, open huts in the trees in the jungles of the Amazon, sun-fired adobes in the American West.
Rather than adapt the organism to the environment, the available resources were adapted to force an environmental shift that allowed the organism to live comfortably. There is a psychological drive to alter the environment, to personalize it, to leave marks on our surroundings. Whether this is a remnant of the evolutionary impulse we've long since subverted, or whether it is an attempt (like I submit all of civilization is) to deny the fundamental impermanence of life isn't particularly clear.