If Howard Stern, Trash TV, and the latest wave of celebrity bastard children make you wonder whatever happened to morality, the New York Times may have found the answer. There is little or no difference between man and animals. The basis for this conclusion is the rather prosaic observation, by some anthropologists, that other species create music, which, wonder of wonders, conforms to certain structures used in human music. And, the only reason that human music is more advanced is that we have better tools. If astronomical differences in level of accomplishment are to be explained away by humans having better tools, as if these tools just grew on trees, then we ARE no different from the very lowest animals.
Telecommunications are no better than pheromones or the baying of hounds.
Literature and the arts are no better than the random debris from a rabbit warren. And the Sistine Chapel is no better than a beaver dam, or an anthill. So fear not. You are more valuable than an animal. The answer is quite simple, and quite sad.