Perhaps our greatest distinction as a species is our capacity, unique among animals, to make counter-evolutionary choices.
Interpretation
Humans have the ability to make choices that can go against natural evolutionary trends.
In this quote, Jared Diamond suggests that unlike other animals, humans possess a remarkable capability to make decisions and take actions that do not follow the dictates of natural evolution. This ability allows us to challenge and alter the course of our development, for better or worse, through conscious choices, ethics, culture, and technology, which can lead to both progress and potential pitfalls.
In practice
During a lecture on human evolution, you might cite this quote to discuss the unique decision-making abilities of humans.
For anyone inclined to caricature environmental history as 'environmental determinism,' the contrasting histories of the Dominican Republic and Haiti provide a useful antidote. Yes, environmental problems do constrain human societies, but the societies' responses also make a difference.
The metaphor is so obvious. Easter Island isolated in the Pacific Ocean β once the island got into trouble, there was no way they could get free. There was no other people from whom they could get help. In the same way that we on Planet Earth, if we ruin our own [world], we won't be able to get help.
But this was the only way of life that humans knew for their first 6m years on the planet. In giving it up over the past few thousand years, we have lost our vulnerability to disease and cold and wild animals, but we have also lost good ways to bring up children, look after old people, stave off diabetes and heart disease and understand the real dangers of everyday life.
We scientists have fantasies of being uniquely qualified to make great discoveries. Alas, reality is cruel: most of us are replaceable. For the vast majority of scientific contributions, if scientist X hadn't achieved it that year, scientist Y would have achieved the same result or something very similar soon thereafter.
All human societies go through fads in which they temporarily either adopt practices of little use or else abandon practices of considerable use.
AIDS and malaria and TB are national security issues. A worldwide program to get a start on dealing with these issues would cost about $25 billion... It's, what, a few months in Iraq.
The basis of a democratic state is liberty
So when a great man dies For years beyond our ken The light he leaves behind him lies Upon the paths of men.
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.
All token Blacks have the same experience. I have been pointed at as a solution to things that have not yet begun to be solved, because pointing at us token Blacks eases consciences of millions, and this is dreadfully wrong.
Most of God's people are contented to be saved from the hell that is without; they are not so anxious to be saved from the hell that is within.
The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.
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