The Arts of Survival- Survival by Design?

So many times we hear of survival of the fittest and all that goes along with Darwinism, but what truth is there behind this, for the past centuries of human existence? Yes, evolution has played a major role in the sustaining vitality of the human race, but what about now? Have we reached the end of our evolutionary cycles? Do we no longer need to adapt to our surroundings with our ever expanding need to design our personal means of survival?

We are the only species to really change our environment to better suit our needs rather than us change to fit our surroundings. This seems to be our approach to many things. Instead of finding a means of compromise and letting ourselves naturally adapt we immediately come up with some way to change our surroundings so we do not need to do the changing. An extreme example of this is living in a semi toxic environment where breathing and sustainability would be quite hard. We come up with shelters, gas masks, air purifiers etc. All products of design to help us maintain healthy living environments. Clearly, it would be hazardous to continue living through these circumstances but there is no way for us to naturally adapt or evolve to be able to survive these situations. We are not exposed to small doses with enough time for our bodies to naturally change and sustain. Organisms breathing oxygen for the first time, a once toxic environment, evolution and adaptation had to occur along the way on some level or the transition from water to land would have never occurred. How much of a natural adaptation process has the human race accomplished most recently?

It appears that we no longer have the need to change ourselves. We implement design to help change our surroundings to better suit our needs rather than any other sort of personal developments we could make naturally. Without design it is hard to say if the human race would even continue to be in existence. Without design we certainly would be in a different sort of evolutionary state. Design is essential to our immediate survival, but at the same time the question stands, is design hindering our evolutionary advancements?