If the entire human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. The insanity would not lie in the
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of the human mind—though it can be a black and raging place indeed. And it certainly wouldn"t lie in the
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. The madness would lie instead in the fact that both of those qualities, the savage and the splendid, can exist in one creature, one person,
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.
We"re a species that is capable of almost dumbfounding kindness. We nurse one another,
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, weep for one another. Ever since science taught us how, we willingly tear the
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and give them to one another. And at the same time, we
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. The past 15 years of human history are
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of those subatomic particles that are created in accelerators and
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, but in that fleeting instant, we"ve visited untold horrors on ourselves. As the
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species the planet has produced, we"re also the lowest, cruelest, most blood-drenched species. That"s
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.
What does, or ought to, separate human beings with other species is our highly developed
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, a primal understanding of good and bad, of right and wrong, of what it means to suffer not only our own pain, but also the pain of others. That quality is
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of what it means to be human. Why it"s an essence that so often spoils, no one can say.
Morality may be a hard concept to grasp, but
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. Psychologists believe even kids can feel the difference between a matter of morality and one of
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innately. Of course, the fact is that a child will sometimes hit and won"t feel particularly bad about it either—unless he"s caught. The same is true
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or despots who slaughter. The rules we know, even the ones we intuitively feel, are by no means
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.
Where do those intuitions come from And
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about following where they lead us Scientists can"t yet answer those questions, but that hasn"t
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. Brain scans are providing clues. Animal studies are providing more.
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are providing still more. None of this research may make us behave better, not right away at least. But all of it can help us understand ourselves—
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perhaps, but an important one.