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I think that we are on the same path, Shattered: mankind's presence and effect on the environment has changed so rapidly that there aren't many animals who have found a stable niche in the human world (like housecats, cows, barnacles, and probably pigeons have). Most of the animals that <b>have</b> found their way into the human sphere haven't been there long enough to have grown dependent upon us -- Holstein cows being the most notable exception.
I don't like the concept of humans not being animals and having an uncrossable chasm between our idea of 'human' and our idea of 'animal'. I regularly argue with religious folk about this (not so much to try to do anything, as because I think it's fun). However, I do believe that there should be a distinction between 'us' and 'everyone', and that that distinction is "we are humans, and none of the other species in our world are human."
The Romantics were the group of artists and authors etc. who revered transcendence and the supernatural, whom sought to return to nature and considered the cities to be worse than the pasture (in disagreement with most everyone else). Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and others from that time period are considered Romantics.
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