You may live on the earth like it's just a "host," but I don't. Neither did most of our ancestors over the past 200,000 years.  I disagree regarding the "genius," also. Those are value judgments, and if those are your values, those are your values.  But they are not universal values, nor are they necessarily the most ethical values.  

So far as extinction goes, your question is ridiculous. Obviously, prior extinctions were due to natural causes and not the result of any life form on earth. Dead may be equally dead wherever we find it, but all dying is not the same. There are accidents, illness, peaceful old age death, and there is murder.  Murder in all its forms, including of the earth, is not genius; it's evil. 

We may be techno-magical geniuses (according to ourselves), but we can't make life as the earth does. I have respect for the life of the earth, something that is beyond human ability to fully understand, much less replicate. If you don't, well,  you don't.