The soon to be ex President of the USA represents everything that is wrong with our species and yet what must it be like to live inside that shell of violent emotion? We should pity the man and people like him.

It is not easy to live your life in a manner which promotes the best interests of our planet if inside you seethe with emotions such as rage, hatred and anger. Perhaps Mr Trump also suffers from other unfortunate qualia. Lust perhaps, envy? Who knows.

We are in a position to know what it is like to be Trump since we share with him the whole range of human emotion and feeling. Most of us will at times have felt all of these destructive sensations and yet the happiest among us have probably mastered the art of balance. We have learnt that the capital vices are good for neither ourselves nor those around us.

Mr Trump and his 88 million Twitter followers are therefore people to be pitied and helped rather than despised and derided. On the spectrum of what is normal, many of them will veer far off that scale. If you define normal as a person who is occasionally taken with one or other “deadly sin”, but is able to live mostly a quiet and pleasant life without falling prey to such emotions, then you probably have a fairly good definition of normal.

Mr Trump and his followers are not, by this definition, normal. Not, at least, in terms of modern normality. Perhaps back in the days of the Vikings or the Goths, Mr Trump would have been considered “normal” and his attitudes applauded.

Let us be frank – Mr Trump is not alone in his condition, even in the 21st Century. But hopefully the majority of us see the sad and damaging pointlessness of hating blacks, or gays or anybody else. Perhaps most of us have come to understand the damage which unbridled lust, or greed causes.

Not so Mr Trump, it seems.

What is to be done then? With people like Trump? In an ideal world as such people age, they would seek and hopefully find some sort of enlightenment. They would realize that even if there is no objective right or wrong in a universe indifferent to suffering, it makes for a better existence to behave as if there were such standards.

Trump can not be a happy man. He can not be the sort of person who looks in the mirror and feels content. It may be fair to assume from the angry expression so often on his face, from his body language and above all by his extreme and violent views, that he is a deeply unhappy man.

And for that I pity him. God knows I have felt enough unhappiness in my life to understand how difficult it is to be happy though human.

There have been so many others like Trump throughout our unfortunate history – some more successful in their attempts to wreak havoc, some less so.

If Trump had the self awareness, the balance to choose his behavior, would he change his ways? Would he seek calm and peace and slough off violence, greed and hatred?

Unaided, perhaps not. The fault is not altogether his. All species on earth have evolved with one aim – to survive by any means possible. While some would prefer not to survive if it means committing atrocities, some are still saddled with the savage drive natural selection has bestowed upon them.

The seven deadly sins are in some of us endogenous, so securely implanted that we will never defeat them unaided. Those people see nothing wrong in such urges and are happy to give them full expression.

More enlightened (and luckier) individuals over the ages have preached peace and decency. They have been largely unheard but their voices continue to provide reason and balm in a hostile and dangerous world.

Unfortunately, the likes of Trump are most unlikely to see the error of their ways. They suffer. they are not happy people.

All we can do is to try to convince such individuals that their behavior damages our world as well as themselves and will eventually destroy us.