No matter how inured you get to atrocities, you're still always stunned and shocked by how cruel and wasteful Homo sapiens can be.

Of course, genes can't pull the levers of our behavior directly. But they affect the wiring and workings of the brain, and the brain is the seat of our drives, temperaments and patterns of thought.

Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.

Genetically influenced behavior is not necessarily good and not necessarily unchangeable. Explanations of bad behavior that appeal to genes do not absolve a person any more than do explanations that appeal to upbringing.

Since the point of erotica is to offer the consumer sexual experiences without having to compromise with the demands of the other sex, it is a window into each sex's unalloyed desires. Pornography for men is visual, anatomical, impulsive, floridly promiscuous and devoid of context and character. Erotica for women is far more likely to be verbal, psychological, reflective, serially monogamous and rich in context and character. Men fantasise about copulating with bodies; women fantasise about making love to people.

Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.

When people talk, they lay lines on each other, do a lot of role playing, sidestep, shilly-shally and engage in all manner of vagueness and innuendo. We do this and expect others to do it, yet at the same time we profess to long for the plain truth, for people to say what they mean, simple as that. Such hypocrisy is a human universal.