We are the animals curiously obsessed with distinguishing ourselves from the rest of animal creation

Mark Rowlands in The Hedgehog Review:

Imagine you are on a bus ride to an unknown destination. The road is little more than a dirt track, littered with potholes, and you are constantly bounced around in your seat. There is no air conditioning. Sweat is dripping down your back and you are starting to smell. The same is true of your fellow travelers. Some of them have brought livestock and other animals on board. Kids are screaming; the bathrooms are blocked and overflowing. It is clear that no one on the bus has any idea where you are going, and only the haziest idea of where you are coming from. Nevertheless, all around you people are making up stories—ungrounded in logic and untethered to evidence—about where they are going to alight and what their prospects will be once they get there.

This situation might give rise to feelings of difference and superiority: I am not like these others; I am better. But suppose, out of the corner of your eye, you caught one of your fellow passengers looking at you, and you looked back. In that person’s eyes, you would see the same anguish, the same recognition of hopelessness and futility, the same disgust, the same fear. At that moment, you would realize that you were both in this together—indeed, that everyone on the bus was in this together.

More here.