That is not the point. We ARE different from other species. We are the most sentient, the most capable of thinking, the most capable of shaping our environment and altering our productive capacity. But we still squander our intelligence and smother our potential as human beings.
Sometimes I hope that there are aliens because that would mean there is intelligent life advanced enough to travel interstellar distances and make it to our planet. And they probably have their shit together much more than we do or they would probably not have made it this far.