One thing that becomes quite noticeable when you weed and landscape in fertile environments is the brimming presence of all sorts of living things, that are then displaced and disrupted as you work. Worms squirm into view as the soil is broken, and then slither their way back into the earth, grub shelters are torn asunder and the poor things lie there curled up embryonically like infants, and various beetles, spiders, and other insects scramble for shelter as the roots, rocks, and plant clumps that house them are removed, broken up, and tossed aside.
If you think about it, on a smaller scale - in relation to the observer at least - entire landscapes for various living communities are being shattered and then rearranged, which is an experience distributed unevenly among the many lifeforms on the planet, including humans, as their lives orbit at progressively closer proximities to the imperial core, where the powers of manipulation and transformation are most concentrated. Life experiences are dramatically different depending on one's power and one's location in space.
One could drop a magnificent and towering tree in the forest, which makes a thundering crash that echoes throughout the land, and then carve it up as it lies shattered on the forest floor, and not be bothered by a soul. This is of course contingent upon how remote one's activities are, and who's land one is working in, and how thoroughly protected and patrolled that land is.
The same is the case if one takes down an elk deep in the forest. One can kill in cold blood - and not have it seen as murder - and then carve up one's kill without anyone raising a finger, and then the rest of the elk and other inhabitants of the forest dash away to secure their lives.
The elk on the other hand live in a state of constant tension, in which the instantaneous crack of a bullet could drop a herd member at any time. They eat in the herd carefully, each member watching the other, with the slightest snap of twig or rustle of bush alerting the one and then the all in quick succession.
One can imagine the effect on the lumber industry if there were some external guardian of the forests that would sweep in and interfere when a tree was felled. Whereas if you were to drop a skyscraper anywhere in the world- much less a storefront window - heaven itself would come crashing down and descend upon you and you'd be dead or at least in jail or fined, depending on your social standing.
One's relative state of power can dramatically change what one can do in terms of transforming the physical environment, or what one can be subject to in the face of a greater power, for that matter. This is a hierarchy that is not only reproduced along gradients of civilization and wilderness, but within the very bosom of the imperial core itself.
There are regions within the imperial core itself which have always been seen as resources to harvest, especially the more othered and marginalized the inhabitants of a given region are. And this window of otherness and marginalization grows in breadth and depth every day. The core's inhabitants begin to find that the landscapes they once dreamed of as secure and eternal are shifting and then disintegrating right under their feet, as outside powers rend their communities and homes to reincorporate that energy into disconnected and alien affairs.
