Humans can override environmental dictates through symbolic future-thinking

Evidence

Their advanced symbolizing capacity enabled humans to transcend the dictates of their immediate environment and made them unique in their power to shape their environment and life courses. Through cognitive self-regulation, humans can visualize futures that act as present guides and motivators for purposeful behavior; order preferences rooted in personal values; construct, evaluate, and modify alternative courses of action to secure valued outcomes; and override environmental influences if necessary. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 154

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Agriculture replaces nomadic presentism with past-and-future rooted identity; Formal logic preconditioned the mind for technological control — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 526; The future is understood both as coming time and as lasting posterity (+3 more)