The Human Superpower

The next time you get a chance to look at some of our closest primate relatives such as chimps please notice their eyes, specifically their sclera. That is just the anatomical name for the whites of our eyes which are dark in other high primates.  The theory I heard on this difference via an evolutionary biologist makes sense.  When a human looks at something, the other humans in their presence notice what they are looking at.  A chimp has an evolutionary advantage if it can notice a ripe piece of fruit without its compatriots also seeing it.  Humans evolved to cooperate in a different way; I suspect if you or I ever met a person with dark sclera we would have an intrinsic deep seeded distrust of them. Whether or not you buy into the sclera explanation, its clear that humans cooperate with each other in ways that other mammals do not. What is perhaps more important than the style of our cooperation is the scope of it. The other social primates only cooperate with members of their band or tribe, with most of whom they are blood related. The human superpower that has granted so much biological success to the species is an ability to cooperate in massive numbers.

What allows us to cooperate in large groups is the ability to create and believe in fiction.  I am not referring to a literary definition here but using the word to differentiate it from a lie.  Chimps can lie.  There have been experiments on their ability to deceive each other for a benefit.  One I remember involved them using their call for "hey, watch out, a predatory bird is overhead" when they hadn't seen a threat.  In reality, they saw a piece of food they wanted, used the call to get everyone to look up in fear, and used the opportunity to snag the treat.  The rub is that the lies biologists witness intelligent social animals make all involve real world objects.  Humans can create fictions that are entirely imaginary.  Chimps can't tell a story about a burning bush or Washington cutting down a cherry tree.  I used these examples of fictions intentionally, as religion and nation states are two clean examples of how humans "buy into" a fictional concept that allows them to cooperate with humans outside of kinship groups or small bands.  A rural farm boy from Nebraska and an urban banker from New Jersey can both join the Army to fight together because they believe in a fiction called "America".  Cooperating comes so naturally to us humans that we don't even see it as a superpower.  Yet no other primate has ever summoned a force of one hundred.  Cooperating in massive groups is what allows humans to dominate the planet and the telling and believing of fictions are the tools used to accomplish this super-organism status.