Are homosapiens the crownprince of evolution?

In many ways "crown prince" is quite apt.  A crown prince is not king yet but 
the potential is there.  He is imature with plenty of power to throw around 
and not enough responsibility. It is also apt in the sense that the 
superiority of a prince over the people is a superficial one deriving mostly 
from power, while in reality there no essential difference between the prince 
and any other human. The human rights of which you speak do not exist 
objectively.  They only exist within the context of the human community and 
are about how we govern our behavior towards one another.

So much for the crown prince analogy. Now lets be more precise.  All living 
things are essentially the same.  There is no qualitative difference.  But 
life is quantifiable. The simplest measurement to describe might be the speed 
of the learning process. In terms of any such quantitative measures of life 
Homo Sapiens is way ahead of any other species on this planet. 

However, the potential is there for being life on an entirely new level in 
two different ways.  The first is the way that the human mind which has much 
of the characteristics of a living organism in its own right, composed of 
dynamic structures of cyclical information flow (commony called things like 
concepts, ideals, values, philosophies, feelings, and personality) in the 
brain, rather than the dynamic structures in the cyclical flow and chemical 
reaction cycles of organic compounds, of which most living organisms are 
composed on this planet.  The second is the way the human race is well on its 
way to forming a communal organism, changing the laws of evolution which 
governs its species by interdependence, technology, and protecting its weaker 
members. The status of these two developments are uncertain, but the 
potential seems to be there in both cases.

The question of whether the human mind is truly alive is not certain.  One of 
the defining criterion of life is that the dynamic structure must maintains 
itself with some independence from its environment (while fully interacting 
with the environment). In other words, something is only alive if its 
behavior cannot be fully explained by the changes in its environment (while 
it is still responsive to those changes).  For a very simplistic example, a 
living mammal will maintain its internal temperature (by making appropriate 
responses) regardless of how the temperature of its environment changes - 
failure to do so is death.  The environment of the mind is the chemical 
organism of the human body and brain, with all its hormones and messaging 
chemicals which certainly have their impact on the human mind.  For most 
animals their behavior can almost always be explained by such chemicals, and 
this fact is usually represented by the term animal instinct.  Often, 
however, human behavior (or so it seems) can only be undertood by taking into 
account the internal dynamic structures (ideals, values, etc..).  Some of the 
internal structures like feelings are strongly intertwined with the chemical 
messaging in the body and cause and effect in these cases can be difficult to 
unravel, and yet they show that the mind is responsive to its environment.  
In simplistic terms, it is a matter of, which is truly in control, the body 
or the mind?  Which needs are more proximate to our being?  Is it the 
material and biological needs like hunger and sex, or is it the abstract and 
conceptual needs?  Are we primarily blood and bones or are we more 
essentially thought and principles.  When we call someone an animal, don't we 
mean that their behavior can be pretty well explained by the chemical drives 
in their body, to which whatever thoughts he may have are subservient?  
Anyway the point is, that there is an unswered question here about whether 
homo sapiens are primarily chemical life forms or whether they are primarily 
life in a completely different medium.

The question of whether the human community can called alive is even less 
certain.  Life is a delicate balance between the extremes of being dominated 
by the environment and being completely insensitive to the evironment.  If 
the human community continues to operate in the zone of crisis management 
without looking ahead and planning for future then I think it can be 
described as by being dominated by the environment. If the human community 
remains insensitive to the ecosphere in which it lives, blundering blindly 
along without really being conscious of the impact it has on the earth then I 
think it is more properly described as a rolling stone than as a living 
organism.  Abstracts like human rights are the internal dynamic structures of 
which the human community are composed.  How seriously take them, how much we 
believe in them, how much we breathe life into these abstracts is a measure 
of the life of the human community.  When we can realistically put our faith 
in such abstract things as rights laws and justice, that is when the human 
community solidifies into a reality.  

The real roblem here is that evolution does not stand still.  You adapt or 
you die.  Homo Sapiens are at such a point.  We must realize our potential 
for becoming something truly unique and alive, or become an evolutionary dead 
end, destined for extinction.  The problem with a rolling stone is that it 
eventually reaches the bottom and then even the superficial appearance of 
life will disappear.  The path to greater life is not an easy one, for both 
faith and doubt must play important roles.