I wasn't overlooking mankind's potential to do amazing things. I'm reflecting on the fact that despite our ability and propensity to do amazing things, we are also at base more violent, far more violent, than I think we give ourselves credit for. I'm sure this sentiment isn't new. I can remember the opening page of Blood Meridian being a newspaper clipping from Arizona reporting on the fact that, essentially, we've been scalping (ie violently brutalising) one another for tens of thousands of years. Perhaps it's a sine qua non of being human.

Despite all our fancy gadgets and fancy thinking and fancy philosophies, we aren't really all that different from those who lived a thousand or ten thousand years ago.