“What superpower do humans have that allow us to rule planet Earth? The answer isn’t obvious… Actually, our superpower is something we use all the time…”
— from the back cover of ‘Unstoppable Us: How Humans Took Over the World’ by historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari.
Professor Harari’s book, Unstoppable Us — written for Middle-School-age readers — featured prominently in yesterday’s Part Two. The book came out in 2022, so I’m guessing it was written during the COVID crisis.
From the inside flap:
From the savannahs of Africa to the ice caps of Greenland, humans rule the planet Earth. But thousands of years ago, we were just another species, gathering berries and fleeing from lions… How did we become so ‘Unstoppable’?…
…’Unstoppable Us’ is the story of humanity as you’ve never heard it before — of how we made the world what it is today, and how our human superpower can change the world of tomorrow.
I admit to being fascinated with superpowers, as a child. When I was about three years old, my mother sewed me a yellow-and-red ‘Mighty Mouse’ costume, and I wore it daily for several months, pretending to fly through the air and beat up criminals. Being myself a mouse, the criminals were of course the cats, who deserved to be dealt with harshly.
How can you not love a mouse, who can put cats in their place?
Thinking back on this now, I suppose my mother was, in a subtle way, encouraging me to believe I could someday have superpowers.
Apparently, philosopher Harari would have us believe the same thing. But the human superpowers, in Professor Harari’s view, were less about flying and punching cats, and more about working cooperatively and creating compelling stories.
The stories we tell don’t need to be accurate, or true. But they must be believable.
Some of the more compelling stories making the rounds in the U.S. over the past couple of decades have to do with immigration.
There are two common but conflicting versions of this story.
While there’s general agreement, that people from Mexico, Central America and South America are making the long trek to the U.S. border, seeking refuge from ongoing violence, poverty, and famine, with the belief that the U.S. has a humanitarian policy of accepting ‘asylum seekers’, we also know that the border is somewhat porous, and people who are not necessarily asylum seekers can — with enough determination and a measure of luck — enter the U.S. without going through the proper legal process.
We likewise know that ‘going through the proper legal process’ is not a simple task and involves many hurdles and road blocks.
Those parts of the story, I think most people can agree with. Not everyone agrees that the U.S. government ought to offer asylum, but I think we can concede that, historically, our government has offered it, and still does offer it, to refugees.
Another part of the story that we might be able to agree on: the refugees from Mexico and other countries south of the border generally speak Spanish and may have limited fluency in English, and they generally embrace the teachings of the Roman Catholic church.
One more thing we might agree on: once these refugees — and the undocumented immigrants who skipped the legal process — successfully enter the country, they tend to be willing to work harder than native-born American citizens, and for lower wages.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, foreign-born Hispanic workers account for about 9 percent of the total U.S. work force, while the total foreign-born workforce comprises about 18 percent. The BLS web page where I found that information did not break out Hispanic worker wages from other foreign workers, but noted that foreign-born workers disproportionately work in service industries, construction, maintenance, production and transportation. For some reason, BLS did not report “agriculture” as a separate job category, but the stories we’ve heard for the past 150 years suggest that Hispanic workers are highly sought after, for crops that require hand-harvesting, and in the meat processing industry.
Once we can agree on certain parts of the story, the rest of the story goes off in two very different directions.
One story paints a picture of Hispanic immigrants — legal or illegal, incoming or already resident — as ultimately harmful to our American way of life. The immigrants from the Hispanic south, so the story goes, consist largely of criminal types, or at least, largely of people who hold different values and customs from those held by most native-born citizens.
This version of the story might also include the idea that Hispanics tend to have a higher birth rate than native-born citizens, and soon enough, the people of Northern European ancestry, who embrace Northern European culture and values, will be the minority in America.
A different version of the immigration story claims that Latinos contributed $3,2 trillion to the U.S. economy last year. But perhaps more importantly, in this alternate version, the United States is a Christian nation that opens its arms to people in desperate need. To people fleeing violence, and possibly starvation. In this version, diversity will make America stronger, rather than weaker.
One of the best storytellers in America — “best” in the sense that his stories are widely believed — is presidential candidate Donald Trump. As a teller of stories, Mr. Trump leaves his competition (Joe Biden) in the dust. If Professor Harari is correct, that the ability to invent fictional stories is one of humanity’s “superpowers”, Donald Trump deserves to wear a superhero’s costume.
From a September 2023 interview with Raheem Kassam on The Pulse:
…Nobody has ever seen anything like this. And I think we could say worldwide. I think you could go to the… you could go to a banana republic and pick the worst one, and you’re not going to see what we’re witnessing now. No control whatsoever.
Nobody has any idea where these people are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions [and] insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country…
Like I said… few people can tell a story the way Donald Trump tells a story.
American carnage. No one has seen carnage like this.