It is true that we can change our environments and therefore our material conditions but these man-made changes are again caused by material conditions leading to people changing their environments. That’s how history is and always has been, a cycle of material conditions influencing people to change their surroundings whose material conditions will cause other people to change their surroundings and so on…the question is what was the initiator of this cycle, was the man who made the first change leading to a change of material conditions or the material conditions which led the man to do the first change? I would say its the second as we, from my atheistic point of view, are results of nature, of millions of years of evolution. We did not always possess the ability to change our world how we want it, those who were born adjusted to their environments would survive, those who were not, would die…we, for a long time, had no say over our survival or nature but due to a chain of environmental changes, we started to develop bigger brains and the ability to analyze and use our environments to our advantage. First the material conditions allowing us to to gain the ability to change our material conditions came. We now are not anymore slaves of nature, of selective survival of those who are adjusted, we are now developed enough to help those in need, those who would not survive…we (mostly) have surpassed these harsh realities making us masters of our destiny, not letting us be dictated by forces we can harness. We have the power to save this planet or destroy it how it currently is under global capitalism. Primitivism, Conservatism, any form of regression is not and cannot be the answer without it undermining our social and/or technical achievements made.