Humans became the planet’s most decisive force without needing claws or fangs. By changing landscapes, breeding animals, and steering ecosystems, one species turned into a geological event.
The victory is rarely noticed because it feels normal. Cities replace forests. Domestic animals outnumber wild ones. Oceans fill with our noise and plastic. The earth’s rhythms still look natural, yet they increasingly carry human fingerprints.
Power has an ethical cost: the suffering of other creatures becomes a background hum, easy to ignore because it is dispersed and constant. Progress is measured in human comfort, while nonhuman lives are treated as raw material.
If the future is about becoming “more than human,” it begins by admitting what being human already did to everything else.