I would like to talk about the risks of AI, Artificial Intelligence that seems to be taking over society. But before you roll your eyes and say, “Not another one!” you should know I am not referring to the AI you are used to hearing about. So far, it is not as dangerous as this one.
By artificial intelligence, I mean people pretending to be acting intelligently when they are doing the opposite. They are basing their anti-Israeli response to the current war on false media reports, biased “marketing,” and personal hatred. They want to believe that they are taking up the noble cause when they are just perpetrating a terrible lie.
If they are Jewish there is usually self-hatred involved. They couldn’t make it as part of the Jewish people or just didn’t want to, feeling more at home within their gentile associates than their own people. They just find it easier to be something in a society of self-contained intelligence and levels of excellence than in one that has high moral standards from God.
They would argue the same about me, and do. But as the saying goes, “You can say anything you want until someone comes along and punches you in the mouth.” In this case, I challenge anyone to sit down with me and go head to head to prove whose society has the better intellectual footing, and which one is more likely to tell the truth. No takers so far.
As I have often said, many people mistake God’s patience for His absence. They don’t feel any risk in doing something that might be the opposite of what He wants. They don’t see God so they assume He is not to be seen, and feel free to decide the truth for themselves. Hence, the world we live in now.
I know I am biased. I am not only Jewish, but I live in Eretz Yisroel. However, those qualifications alone do not make me biased in favor of my people as many local Jewish leftists prove. I happen to also be Torah observant, which means my standard of truth comes from God, and I am limited in my interpretation of it.
But I did not begin that way, as I have spoken about more times than I would have cared to. It’s not something that interests anyone to know, so I usually only refer to my journey from secularism to Torahism when I need to make a point.
Like now. I came from the Western world and rejected it before it rejected me. I took the time that most people do not, to research and understand where it came from and why. I took a closer, more critical look at what most people just take for granted to see if I should continue to play “follow the leader,” or to consider if there was a more meaningful way to live “life.”
Few answers that I came up with were promising. People were so focused on living a comfortable and secure life that the purpose of life was a very distant second to getting a profession and make a good, solid living. You can tell the intellectual depth of society by the focus of its education, and the focus of Western education is not deep at all. It is just very practical.
The danger in what I did was that I did not have a viable alternative to my home society in my back pocket. You can’t, I found out the hard way, just discard your past way of living in whole or even part if you don’t have another to go to, and I didn’t.
I certainly didn’t have an inkling that Judaism had more to say than what I had been taught at Cheder for nine years. I had long said goodbye to that, thinking it was antiquated, and that all religion was the opium of the masses, etc., for people who can’t make it in the “real” world.
My brushes with Orthodox Judaism didn’t help to dispel that much. My grandmother had been Orthodox and could not fit into the modern world at all. My relative had become Orthodox as a teenager, but we never talked about why. The few Orthodox people I saw in Toronto were usually Chassidim who seemed like from Europe 200 years ago. No one made me the slightest bit curious about why they all insisted on hanging on to a dying religion. “Just let it die already,” I thought to them.
What I didn’t know was that I was on somewhat of a parallel course with my own religion that I had assumed was headed in the opposite direction. It took a couple of years and some incredible Hashgochah Pratis to bring about my convergence with it, and I still remember the day I read a book I was given by a friend that showed I was actually re-inventing the wheel.
After years of research and lots of deep thinking, I was relieved to see that others had already tread a path for me to follow. And though I had absolutely no desire to become religious at the time, I was intrigued enough by the wisdom for life that I was seeing to want to see more of it, which I did, and did, and did.
Long story shorter, my river of knowledge became a pond, the pond became an ocean, and the ocean has become…actually, I’m not sure, because it just keeps growing in every direction. If I had known back at the beginning of my entry into Torah Judaism what I know now, I would have jumped in headfirst. But then again, I wouldn’t have been a beginner for that matter.
The average Western Jew does not question the foundations of their society, and they have no idea what they are ignoring. Even so-called Bible Critics know so little about that which they are critiquing, leading them to write bogus reports on a topic they profess to know but barely understand.
So yes, I am biased too, but in a specific direction and for a great reason. This will infuriate some, nauseate others, and cause many to discount me. But none of that will be based upon any truth, just biased biases and, for the most part, uncomfortable feelings they would rather flee than confront.
And they get away with it, for now. But so did the people of Noach’s generation…until God said, “No more.” So did the generation of the Black Plague, until God said, “No more.” So did the generations before World War I and the Second World War, until God said, “No more.” And everyone is getting away with it for now until God will say one last time, “No more.”
How will He do it this time? World War III? Another deadly pandemic? A massive solar flare or rogue meteor? Who knows. There are many messengers of God, and even more ways to deliver His message…and less and less time to do it. Artificial Intelligence of computers may be here to stay, but ours has to go, and the sooner, the safer.
The truth is out there. The facts are available. Don’t be afraid to know them, or to live according to them. You can fool people most of the time, you can fool yourself a lot of the time, but you can’t fool God any of the time, and He has let mankind know that in no uncertain terms.