You have the gist of the two theories I'm struggling with, however I wouldn't describe the alternative theory as one in which there is any  "desire" for adaptation, but rather it is the nature of consciousness to adapt.  I can't count how many times I've driven a car someplace and I can't even remember the process of driving there.  My awareness goes off somewhere else while some subconscious or unconscious process takes over and makes sure that I'm not only capable of driving my vehicle, but also of driving there so well that even the most sophisticated computer simulations would have difficulty calculating and measuring all of the spatial, weather, traffic, and road conditions in real-time so as to keep me from killing myself.  For any thing to alter a course of action to avoid destruction or preserve itself is a sign of intelligence and problem-solving, and heck, maybe even self-awareness.

Yes, I'm suggesting that bacteria and plants are conscious agents.  If you'd like a more detailed explanation of why I think this and why I think the evidence supports this, I can give it a shot, but it'd be pretty long-winded.  There are certain-yet-uncommon assumptions I've formed over the past few years, yet I almost completely forget that most people don't hold the same assumptions, and so I also forget that it's pretty much impossible for me to make a brief statement in these kinds of threads and communicate what I'm thinking.  The TL;DR version is that I believe this theory because I think subconsciousness and unconsciousness are actually just subtler levels of consciousness despite their riddled names, that consciousness is misunderstood by being defined too narrowly, and that these subtler facets of consciousness distribute to any living thing.  The long-winded version would include a lot of philosophy, and I feel that I'd then have to justify the need for philosophy when talking about a scientific theory that is only supposed to consider empirical evidence, and this would include explaining why I think that the scientific method may not be the best method for comprehensive theory-making about evolution.