HUMANITY The Extraordinary Irony of Our Own Self-Destruction We call ourselves intelligent. We call ourselves civilized. We call ourselves humane. Perhaps it is time we looked up the meaning of the words. There is something almost magnificent about humanity. Magnificent, that is, in the sheer scale of its contradictions. We are the species that can split the atom but apparently cannot share a loaf of bread. We can send machines billions of miles into space, peer backwards through the universe towards the beginning of time, transplant human hearts, decode DNA, communicate instantaneously across continents and build computers capable of processing quantities of information that would once have seemed supernatural. And yet, after thousands upon thousands of years of what we rather generously call civilization, we still have not mastered the extraordinarily complicated concept of not killing one another. We build monuments to peace while manufacturing weapons. We preach compassion while st...