But in general I think this is also reflective of a negative trend in Western culture, which is something like a collapse of the “divine potential” of man. I don’t mean it in the literal religious sense (although that’s where it came from), but in the sense that many people increasingly see themselves as just evolved apes, not as creative beings with limitless potential. There are many reasons for this cultural trend (evolution, secularism and the collapse of religion as a foundation for our idea of self), and so on.
The key, to me, is in understanding that this “evolved ape” narrative is a fundamentally a narrative. What’s needed is a new story that factors in these scientifically true facts of evolution etc. but isn’t so flat and unimaginative in placing them into an arch-narrative.
It probably needs to start with a shift from essence to process as foundational. In other words, the deflationary account of humanity sees itself as “just an evolved ape” because we categorize things as if they were unchanging, static entities. A shift to a process-oriented idea means that value can grow in complexity and develop over time, and so therefore there isn’t anything deflationary about being descended from microscopic organisms.
It reminds me of philosopher Feuerbach’s ideas on God, which are essentially that humanity has externalized its own qualities and greatness into an abstract being, and become estranged from our own potential.