Human nature was on naked display this week, for better or for worse. Or neither.

We are who we are and we're wired the way we're wired. We fool ourselves, a lot.

We see the world as we want to see it. As we need to see it. And I say that in the least judgmental way possible, because I'm as guilty as anyone.

It will be some time before anyone knows the true extent of the damage the Haiti earthquake has wrought. Already some truly mind-boggling figures are being thrown about.

The death toll estimates range from 30,000 to 100,000. I just can't get my mind around a number like that. How do you put it into perspective? If the true number is on the low end of that range, that's a Hurricane Katrina every week for six months. If the total really does reach six figures, that's like a 9/11 every day for a month.

I don't feel remotely qualified to understand, ponder or comment upon something like that. This is tragedy on a scale that people aren't equipped to deal with properly. We think about things that are much more mundane.

For myself, I can't help but be more fascinated by something much less consequential: Mark McGwire's confession to using performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career.

It's simultaneously a major news story and an incredibly unshocking revelation, but it is unquestionably very human theater.

First, there's the reaction from pundits in fans. The desire for justice is almost as strong as the urge to simplify the situation.

"He did something bad, so something bad should happen to him" is one of our earliest complex thoughts, something that children's stories usually emphasize to cheering two-year-olds. But of course, there are those who go the other way, who don't want to think about the consequences of his actions and shrug it off any which way they can.

The larger issues go largely ignored, because the answers aren't quite so simple. It's hard to dig deep into the complex grey areas, it's easy to take one side and yell at the others.

Performance enhancers have pervaded sports to a degree that they are almost ubiquitous in the circles of any elite athlete, and they have been that way for many decades further back than the 1990s. Nobody wants to deal with that.

Modern PEDs also evolve so quickly that nobody really knows what is going on with them. We learned in the 1970s that traditional steroids have all kinds of nasty, long-term side effects.

There are virtually no scientific studies done on the stuff that's on the market now, some of which might be incredibly harmful and some of which may actually be amazing, life-improving wonder-drugs.

But science is hard work and requires patience, and McGwire's Hall of Fame credentials need to be debated now.

And then there's the slugger himself. He appeared in a TV-interview, teary-eyed and asking for forgiveness, stating he believed he would have hit all those home runs even without a little chemical help.

I believe he believes that.

Whenever cheaters and liars and embezzlers hit the news, I see a common thread: Belief that their lives are meant to be a certain way and the universe just isn't quite living up to its end of the bargain.

These people have a certain mental picture of themselves, and if they aren't living up to it, then it's OK to go under the table to make things right. McGwire saw himself as an elite ballplayer, and when injuries threatened to derail his career, he was just cheating to set things back to the way they were supposed to be.

Besides, everybody was doing it. No matter how many times our parents tried to instill in us this is not a valid excuse, deep down most of us still believe it is.