According to a hasidic legend, Rabbi Simchah Bunim of Przysucha used to carry a slip of paper in one pocket that read, “I am but dust and ashes,” and one in the other pocket that read, “the world was created for my sake.” This dialectical view of human nature can be found throughout ancient and modern rabbinic thought, and has its parallel in the writings of the deeply Chrisian philosopher Blaise Pascal. To Thomas Fuchs this tension has been taken to an absurd, secular extreme in the messianic and apocalyptic currents in the modern West. Environmentalists warn that humanity will bring about the destruction of the world; some even hope for human extinction to prevent this. Techno-futurists, meanwhile, predict a world where machines become superior to humans, or where the distinction between man and machine disappears.

Fuchs believes these views are two sides of the same coin, attributable to what he calls “narcissistic depressive technoscience,” the “paradoxical” result of remarkable progress combined with declining religious faith:

We increasingly believe in the superiority of our own artificial creatures. We begin to be ashamed of our existence as all-too-earthly beings of flesh and blood. And the grandiose self-exaltation ultimately turns into pitiful self-abasement.

Premodern people could be certain of their value as children in the image of God, indeed as the crown of creation. They could see themselves reflected in the eye of the Creator. But in whom or what do we now reflect ourselves after the death of God, when a benevolent gaze no longer falls on us? The new mirror is the intelligent, conscious machine, which we strive to create and which at the same time is supposed to cure our loneliness in the cosmos. A look at today’s transhumanists will help us see this more clearly.

The AI utopians, the high priests of pure information, want to convince us that we are only imperfect machines. If we really take the measure of our machines, if we want to mirror ourselves in them, then we would have to optimize ourselves further and further in order not to fall by the wayside—a hopeless struggle.

Calling the proposal to depopulate Gaza completely (if temporarily) “unworkable,” Peter Berkowitz makes the case for a similar, but more feasible, plan:

The United States along with Saudi Arabia and the UAE should persuade Egypt by means of generous financial inducements to open the sparsely populated ten-to-fifteen miles of Sinai adjacent to Gaza to Palestinians seeking a fresh start and better life. Egypt would not absorb Gazans and make them citizens but rather move Gaza’s border . . . westward into Sinai. Fences would be erected along the new border. The Israel Defense Force would maintain border security on the Gaza-extension side, Egyptian forces on the other. Egypt might lease the land to the Palestinians for 75 years.

The Sinai option does not involve forced transfer of civilian populations, which the international laws of war bar. As the United States, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and other partners build temporary dwellings and then apartment buildings and towns, they would provide bus service to the Gaza-extension. Palestinian families that choose to make the short trip would receive a key to a new residence and, say, $10,000.

The Sinai option is flawed. . . . Then again, all conventional options for rehabilitating and governing Gaza are terrible.