If not human, what else?

If there's one message that really sticks in my head after reading Pratchett's books, it's that the human race truly is the most astoundingly monstrous of all, not least because we don't realise it most of the time.

When someone does something shockingly cruel or twisted, we like to say how inhuman he or she is - but that doesn't make any sense, because no other living thing that we know of could possibly do such things. Oh, they often rip each other's guts out, sure, but the intent behind it is completely different. They do so as part of their natural programming. Only human beings could be so sick as to hurt other beings in the way we have done, so malicious as to do so deliberately, so ignorant as to do so in high spirits, and so arrogant as to call such acts "inhuman".

So what is "human"? Are only kind, caring acts of goodness human? Only what is morally right is human?

The drawn-out, cold-blooded, premeditated murder of a woman with her child watching from a ringside seat is every bit as human as a donation to disaster victims. It would be nothing but conceit to deny that. With the good... comes the bad.

Results're in two days. I can't breathe.