Seagulls and Purpose of life

I stumbled across an interesting article  in HBR Blogs and couldn't resist my self commenting on it as below

"It baffles me that out of trillions of species that live and perish in this universe, why is that we humans are the only ones that does this critical thinking in trying to understanding the metaphysical level - like the purpose of all existence ? and constantly keep evaluating our surroundings ? a Seagull that goes on about it's flight path to catch it's food does it ever wonder why it's flying ? or what its life's purpose in bigger schema of things ? how about a whale in ocean ? or that e-coli bacteria ? do they all wonder about why they do what they do ?.. they just seem to do whatever they need to do for their basic needs of surival (growth is implied) and reproduction? beyond that they seem to be in bliss ..never seeming to care about anything else around through their life cycle ? or poke their noses in other's affairs ! ...it seems that so-called elite thinking or overthinking is our bane and not a boon ! the ultimate purpose of life is already there right infront of our eyes as evidenced from all the life forms around us (ofcourse minus one) .. "to live in simplest form & means possible" -- Only we are too egoistic to accept it !"

Now, that seagull example in my comment above was actually a real one.. an extension of my wild thoughts that pondered when I was driving home in rush hour traffic across Fremont bridge and saw a seagull flying over it, and wondered about what the bird must be thinking of all the fools stuck in traffic below. 

Later at home during some interesting dinner table conversation, I raised this topic with my daughter about this idealogical question - why is it that we as humans have so many artificial needs like clothes, cars, homes,  etc..where as none of the other species like these birds don't  seem to need ?. One valid argument my daughter made was that the things we made eg clothes etc make us survive better in harsh conditions, which otherwise would have made us inhabitable to place like Portland in winter.. so her logic was al of this stuff that we need is part of our survival and increase our chances. My question was then - why is that no other species decided to do the same ? or in fact the more important question was what if all other species also start to do the same thing ? that is to increase their chance of survival by creating stuff that was not natural to them.  How about that visual of a seagull driving a porsche ? (could be cool idea for next Pixar movie !)

 
Here let me take slight detour into biology and genetics that I am getting recently fanatic about.. to talk about the theory of natural evolution , that the species would slowly genetically evolve with changed features to survive their habitats and thus become diverse. During this process, ofcourse several generations die as they couldn't adopt or survive. But that's all part of the law of nature ! small plants slowly evolving to become giant redwoods, or lizards evolving into mighty komodo dragons. So why is that when all other species try to follow this arduous and painful path of evolution, we humans try to throw-in a shortcut by going against the natural process and artificially comeup with our own process of self-evolution.  That takes back to my original question and whether by developing artificial means to increase our chances of survival in a short run through all the stuff we invent, are we really gaining anything in long run or infact are we jeopadizing our own chances of future survival ??  
 
Take a look from the caveman times to now - we lost our hair, which was almost thick fur-like back in those caveman days that protected from harsh winters (infact  my wife agrees too I was like a caveman with my head full of hair back in days when we got married) ; we lost our long nails (damn it! they would have been so useful as bottle openers) ; we lost our capability to eat or drink anything direct from nature without purifying it through thousand screens ; we can't survive in wilderness for more than a day (rescue squads have to be sent in !!).  So by not allowing human bodies to carrout the necessary genetic evolutionary processes just like other species do by exposing them to the harsh nature .. as the time passes we are infact are becoming weaker and vlulnerable in comparision to other species that are evolving to become stronger. 

Now extrapolate this for thousand years and what do you think is going to happen to be human race ?.. a small portion of us who remain will be living in airtight germ-free regulated dark underground colonies that are fully equipped with artificial rivers, trees, mountains (as we can't risk exposure to direct sun, open air, trees), wearing hazmat suits round the clock, that have built in screens that can stream live feeds of millions gigabites per sec of the wild, beautiful nature outside where the flocks of Seagulls still fly freely on the Fremont bridge, only this time with hoards of Komodo dragons roaming free below !  whew..wait a minute, we can't let that happen !! we need to do something.
 
So here's my suggestion for human race... if you care about your survival start to think about how to live free  like that of the Seagull in Sky.. may be then you might become the first generation of  "futurites" (my copyrighted trademark name for future human species ;-) who might evolve slowly to gain some really cool super abilities to survive the future.. such as ability to directly drink water from rivers, live in wilderness for a week on their own without any idevice, communicate through vocal cards rather than using fingers to type on to a screen, or able to walk a mile without collapsing. 

[Of course all of this is possible only if we pass the immediate danger to the human race this year.  Yes,  I am referring to the fuss about 2012 Mayan calendar and Apocalypse ! I frankly think we are all not yet so highly evolved or lucky to die such sudden, painless death !!! such forutne only favours fully evolved species like Dinosaurs.   But we never know, the recent solar storms , the signs of missing snow on mountains, does make this year look out of the ordinary ! may be time to Party like the end of the world !!]