I try to understand countries by pounding their streets. This was partly why, early on Monday morning, October 5, 2026, I hit the streets of New York. How early do people wake up in a city that never sleeps? What is the rush hour like?
What attracted me most that morning was the sight of children going to school. A man appeared with a child sitting astride his shoulders, the child’s feet wrapped around his neck and his hands clutching his head. I thought it was dangerous. Another man approached, singing loudly, with a child running beside him. Then, a woman dashed across the road, with two children following closely behind, apparently trying to catch a bus. Nearby, a kindergartener wept as his mother dragged him to school.
Yes, education is the key to the future, but these children do not know that yet.
Three days later, news I dread to hear in what is often called ‘God’s own country’ began to circulate. There had been a shooting, this time in the Marble Hill neighbourhood of New York City. No, it was not carried out by a disturbed individual or the police. The shooters were the new kids on the block: agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
They had surrounded the car of 28-year-old Dominican migrant Oscar Belgal, who had his five-year-old son with him. ICE agents fired at least seven shots into the car. Belgal was hit in the neck and seized, but the boy was unharmed.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani called President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin in an attempt to negotiate Belgal’s release. When that failed, he called a press conference, demanding that ICE halt its enforcement activities in the city because, in his view, they were making it less safe.
He then made a poetic demand: “This city wants ICE out. We want ICE out of our city, ICE out of our schools, ICE out of our hospitals, ICE out of our streets, ICE away from our kids.”
The Department of Homeland Security said the incident occurred during a targeted enforcement operation in which “the criminal illegal alien was injured.”
The city erupted in anger, followed by two days of rallies. The anger was directed not only at the Trump administration but also at Mamdani, as protesters suspected that the New York Police Department (NYPD), which he oversees as mayor, might have assisted ICE in the operation. Mamdani had ordered an investigation into possible NYPD cooperation.
I thought a lot, not just about American life but also about humanity. Where are we coming from, and where are we headed?
I turned to the American Museum of Natural History. Perhaps it held some answers.
The museum itself is not without controversy. One notable case involved the bronze statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt. Unveiled in 1940, the statue depicted Roosevelt on horseback, flanked by a Native American man and an African man on foot. Critics argued that the composition placed the white man in a position of dominance while portraying the Indigenous man and the African as assistants or servants. To these activists, the statue represented a form of internal colonialism.
The controversy and protests spread nationwide, eventually prompting the New York City Public Design Commission to vote in June 2021 to remove the statue.
My primary attraction at the museum, however, was the dinosaurs. These creatures roamed the Earth millions of years before human beings appeared. Dinosaurs first emerged about 245 million years ago, while the non-avian dinosaurs went extinct roughly 66 million years ago. This means that long before humans came into existence, dinosaurs had already lived and dominated the Earth for millions of years.
Before Adam was created and the subsequent biblical account of Eve’s creation, the dinosaurs had already come and gone.
In many ways, these creatures appeared better adapted to their environment than we are. For instance, some dinosaurs had digestive systems that allowed them to process tough plant material, and certain species swallowed stones that helped grind food in their stomachs. Unlike humans, who develop two successive sets of teeth — milk teeth and permanent teeth — many dinosaurs continually replaced their teeth throughout their lives whenever they became damaged or worn down. Duck-billed dinosaurs, for instance, could go through thousands of teeth over a lifetime.
What, then, can we learn from creatures that ranged from relatively small animals to giants measuring tens of metres in length?
One important lesson is the vulnerability of life on Earth. A catastrophic asteroid impact, followed by massive environmental changes, contributed to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Dust and other material thrown into the atmosphere blocked sunlight, disrupted ecosystems and made survival difficult for many species.
The sobering truth is that humanity possesses its own capacity for destruction. Through nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction, we could trigger a catastrophe capable of threatening the survival of human civilisation. The same species that has achieved extraordinary scientific and technological progress also possesses the means to destroy much of what it has built.
I continued through the museum’s section on the origins of humanity, including displays about the Neanderthals, an archaic human group that is now extinct.
In our post-dinosaur world, elephants are among the largest land animals. I visited their section of the museum and marvelled at these giant creatures. One of the largest known elephants stood about 3.96 metres tall and weighed approximately 12.24 tonnes. The specimen was reportedly found in Angola on November 7, 1974.
Looking at the elephants, as well as other animals such as gorillas, bears and lions, I wondered whether our predatory instincts and relentless exploitation of nature could eventually drive these creatures to extinction, just as other species have disappeared from the Earth.
The museum’s impressive displays recreated the animals in their natural environments, offering visitors a glimpse of the extraordinary diversity of life on our planet.
I then stepped into another controversy: the Northwest Coast Hall, dedicated to the lives and cultures of Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest.
The exhibits included ceremonial regalia associated with chiefs and spiritual traditions, as well as representations of systems of governance in which social standing was linked not simply to wealth but also to how much a person gave away to others. The hall was filled with works of art and examples of ocean-going canoes. Some of the towering carvings, measuring more than seven metres, were made from enormous trees. The canoes, too, were crafted from large tree trunks and could carry dozens of people.
The controversy centred on the objection by some Indigenous people to having their cultural heritage displayed in a natural history museum. They questioned why their communities and traditions should be exhibited in an institution associated with the study of the natural world when they were not animals or specimens.
However, scholar Morgan Guerin defended the exhibition. In a statement displayed in the hall, he wrote: “There is a lot of the ancestors’ souls within these pieces.”
His words offered a different perspective: the objects were not merely artefacts but vessels of memory, identity, spirituality and ancestral connection.
There was not much on Europe in the sections I visited, so I was advised to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, popularly known as ‘The Met’, at 1000 Fifth Avenue. The museum houses artworks spanning more than 5,000 years of human history from different parts of the world.
The following day, I was there, combing through its Roman and Greek collections and its African galleries. The displays offered further evidence of the richness of human civilisation and the importance of Africa in the story of humanity.
Outside The Met, crowds had gathered. Some visitors sat on the steps leading up from the pavement towards the museum’s entrance, while others milled around the building.
As usual, whenever I am in New York, I visit Harlem. There stood the imposing statue of Frederick Douglass, the African-American abolitionist and orator who escaped slavery to become one of the most influential campaigners against the institution.
Douglass once said: “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
Nearby was a statue of Harriet Tubman, the woman who risked her life to help enslaved people escape to freedom. Her determination could be summed up in the familiar declaration: “Liberty or death.”
From there, I proceeded to an African restaurant almost opposite the Malcolm X Mosque, beside the boulevard named after the African-American civil rights leader.
Brother Malcolm, as he is often called, famously insisted on the necessity of liberation “by any means necessary”.
The experiences of that week — watching children make their way to school, reflecting on a shooting involving immigration agents, examining the history of human civilisation and contemplating the extinction of species — left me with a common thread to consider.
Humanity has come a long way, but our progress has not eliminated our capacity for cruelty, domination or destruction. We have conquered diseases, explored space, built extraordinary cities and developed technologies that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined. Yet we continue to wage wars, persecute vulnerable people and threaten the natural world on which our survival depends.
The children I watched on the streets of New York represent the future. The shooting in Marble Hill raises difficult questions about security, immigration enforcement and the protection of human life. The dinosaurs remind us that no species, however dominant it may appear, is guaranteed an eternal existence. The elephants, gorillas, bears and lions remind us that other forms of life also depend on our willingness to protect the planet.
Perhaps the most important lesson is that civilisation should be measured not only by the sophistication of our museums, the power of our weapons or the wealth of our cities, but also by how we treat the vulnerable and how responsibly we use our power.
We must protect human beings from predators, defend the dignity of children and other vulnerable people, preserve the natural world and save humanity from the possibility of a dinosaur-like extinction.
We must do so by any means necessary.
