Sorry, I absolutely do not agree. 1) They do exercise control, self-aware or not. Your guts' bacteria control what you can eat or not. The environment bacteria

Sorry, I absolutely do not agree. 1) They do exercise control, self-aware or not. Your guts' bacteria control what you can eat or not. The environment bacteria control what diseases you can get and even if live or die. The bacteria decide what chemicals are to stay in the air or not, even what chemicals are released in the air, including the most extremely deadly toxins we know about (e.g. botulin, anthrax...). 2) Humans definitely do not exert far more control over the environment around them. You're talking about building and modifying the environment. Bacteria directly decide if there can be life or not in an environment, and even which forms can be alive or not. What nutrients will be available. What the air, water and earth chemical composition is going to be. Besides, many bacterias are apex predators. They do shape everything to fit their "wishes", even including human behavior since they make up 50% of your body, and that without counting the mitochondrion. So whatever we actually do as humans "controlling" the environment does not even come close to what bacteria control. 3) And finally, we can't get rid of all bacteria, ever, mainly because that would kill us as well. They could easily kill us all whenever they want to, and they won't even notice.