Yeah, it's a tricky thing: where dualism fits into a naturalistic philosophy. We no longer agree with Descartes' absolute dualism (the dichotomy between mental and material substances). But it's hard to deny the strangeness of life and of consciousness in the mostly lifeless and mindless universe. There's an anomoly here or at least a weird rarity. Life evolves and eventually retreats, as you say, to its tribes and its artificial shelters, recoiling from the lifeless Other.

Somehow we both belong to that Other and are inherently lifeless ourselves, or are doomed to witness that nature of ours be revealed in death, and we're alienated from that source.