STATS TO PONDER

A friend of mine wrote me and said she believed man was`a level above animals...and I suspect most people would agree. But I wonder whether that popular view is true:

• we abuse, debase, demean, mistreat, molest, ravish, cheat, lie, steal, plunder, pillage, rape, etc., 
• we murder half a million of us each year, 
• we have fought over 3,000 wars in recorded human history, 
• we killed over 160 million people in wars during the 20th century, 
• we have aborted over 1,300,000,000 fetuses since 1980
• we commit a rape in the U.S. every 2 minutes
• we commit a rape in South Africa every 18 seconds
• we have a divorce rate of 50% in the U.S. and 11 countries have a higher rate
• we have a life expectancy of 78 years, just 8 years more than the elephant and over 100 years less than the Galapagos tortoise, neither of which have the benefit of annual visits to a physician or prescription drugs or self-help books or exercise regimens
• we are weak and slow when compared to animals a fraction of our size
• we have the capacity to think conceptually, but few of us do it regularly and many of us don't even know`what that means. 

Still think we are a level above?