[colechristensen]

Assuming the 'drive for survival' is a root cause misses the point. There isn't a point.

You exist because your ancestors reproduced. That's it. The traits that they had happened to result in reproduction given their life experiences. A "drive for survival" happens to be one of these traits that shows up often and for easy-enough to understand reasons, but it just happens to be one of the traits that exists in the population.

The environment shapes what reproduces, but it's messy and prone to random circumstance.

We're all the result of a billions of years old monte-carlo simulation.