Up till the moment I began flicking through the Guardian magazine, I'd been toying with the idea of somehow exploring the notion of the epiphany.

A friend from my Saturday morning yoga class had got me thinking on these lines this after she'd said that the moment she realised she had to move - her epiphany in other words - came without warning in Holland Park. That same afternoon, she went to the estate agent and the ball started a-rolling.

Revelation to revolution in one day. So that was what I had in mind to write about; that sign, that moment, the flash of light. Then, I opened the Guardian magazine and stopped.

Inside was an incredible article, which even putting aside my true Guardian loyal reader's mantle I don't think any other newspaper would have the courage to publish, and certainly not without some gratuitous gesture to say how daring they were. A gesture I've seen too often which replaces any impact with basking self adulation of how brave which ever paper it is believes itself instead.

The Guardian is n't like that.

This article was numbing. Stupefying. Photos taken by front-line photojournalists, briefly captioned, of shattering scenes of horror from the wars that stain this planet. There's one I can't shake. A black and white shot of a glazed killer with a knife gripped between his teeth in the manner of a cartoon pirate, but this was diabolical, bandoliered with bullets, and taken in one of those traumatised West African countries, Liberia or Sierra Leone, which have been tortured and tormented by war and death. Riven with savagery. Bereft of mercy.

This man - this pure killer - has an unfathomable madness, something deeper and wilder than blood lust about him. Gripped in one of his hands he's holding a severed hand like a sportsman might hold a trophy; in the other, and I'm still horrified by this, he's clutching the genitalia of whoever it is he's slaughtered. It is unimaginable.

The rhetorical questions have to stop. There's no point any more in theorising emptily why people do this. It has to be fought. And this is where I've had my epiphany: I'm rejoining Amnesty International.