Earth sharing

How good is humanity at sharing the earth with all that lives? When we were few, there was competition, within our species and with untold other species. Barring the viruses and bacteria all the other competitor species are now under control… more or less. Our own intraspecies competition is running wild, of course. The rest live where we allow them to or where we couldn’t be bothered about them, in numbers that must not bother us. 

When thinking abilities of our species reached the stage of discovering responsibility, our leading thinkers conceived ideas around ethical behaviour and moral choices. Gradually the teachers started spreading what the thinkers concocted, the preachers multiplied it, and the moral police imposed some rules.

Mass production of ideas sped up with the written word, and give or take a few centuries, voters started picking leaders in terms of their take on matters sounding ethical. In this way slavery was ruled out, they say, colonialism got a bad name, and gender equality dawned. Universal suffrage was followed by recognition of whose ancestors did what to whom. Now there’s a free for all on many things, but consensus won’t soon be achieved on anything. So, animal rights, who may eat whom, and what needs to be changed because it’s right, are proliferating. 

For example: Will the Rooisand wild horses have liberated mates any time soon in parts of all countries where horses used to be riding horses, work horses, racing horses, war horses, and food in the past? Or still are?