It’s bad enough that you’re plying a trade for which you haven’t the aptitude or integrity, but you could at least check your conclusion against the … - Charles E. Gannon

No: the answer you like the most is the one you should trust the least. Go over the evidence one more time: be sure you haven’t missed something.

And over the many months that followed, as Caine crept through both terrestrial and alien undergrowth on missions to reclaim some of the autonomy humanity had lost, he learned and relearned the prime lesson in common to all the shocks:
That all assumptions, like all plans, or never more than a second away from a catastrophic collision with reality.

The only proper course of action regarding humanity was to leave it alone, and, if possible, isolate it. Just as one would handle any other sophont that was quite irremediably and dangerously insane.