The curse that is self-awareness

Human escape from natural constrains sounds like a worthy project. Destruction of nature seems, well, destructive, but of course so does nature. I’m of two minds on the subject. I try to sleep at night by imagining that self awareness is unique to humans, but remain aware that notions of human exceptionalism, like notions of pie in the sky, are a feature of religion, not science. Consciousness as a result of evolution, where evolution is a result of natural selection, is quite the trap. Cruel enough to tempt me to pendulum swing all the way past atheism to Manichaeism or some other type of demiurgical belief system.