Fear of Human Exceptionalism

It seems to me that, for fear of being branded haughty and hierarchical evolutionary patricians, we now run a mile from embracing our obvious human uniqueness as if anxious to put off our responsibility and the enormous proportions of it. This shows itself in a rush to prioritise our proximity to other animals (and there is no question we are animals) over the painfully obvious differences which we contrive to blink at. We are always seeing programmes about Jackdaws ingeniously removing straws from plastic cylinders to get at nuts as if this equates to or will shortly aspire to Marcus Aurelius and Einstein. We are very anxious not to appear too privileged. We are embarrassed by ourselves and try very hard to be down with the other kids hoping they won't notice that a unique pair of eyes peers out of our animality. There is an undignified scramble to disavow ourselves.