Benny
Avni wrote a column that is so superficial even by his standard, there is no
way we can make sense of what we encounter reading it, and no straightforward
manner by which to discuss it intelligently. For these reasons, I must employ
an unusual method to dig out what may be going on deep inside the author's
brain.
So,
imagine a group of scholars coming from a faraway planet to study intelligent
life on Earth. Because they have been to other planets in the Milky Way, they
have determined that while history is made by random chance ten percent of the
time, it is made ninety percent of the time when forces generated by the
decision makers come into play. Such forces can be of the emotional type or be
the product of a rational design.
The
scholars from outer space know they will eventually have to study the history
of human civilization going back to its beginnings before they will close the
books on Planet Earth and move on to another planet. But they just arrived, and
so they start as usual, by recording their first impressions of what they see.
It happened that they caught a Benny Avni column which came under the title:
“Trump can't just let the Treasury do the fighting,” published on January 16,
2019 in the New York Post. And they plan to make full use of it.
Their
preliminary observation is to the effect that Avni's piece suggests that human
beings are automatons endowed with some kind of rudimentary intelligence. Moreover,
the humans appear to be animated by an algorithm whose origin remains
mysterious, which is a challenge for the scholars, but one they plan to unearth
and study in depth.
Nevertheless,
to explain what's behind their early observation, the scholars from outer space
pointed to the following condensed passages in the Avni article: “Four US
troops and 15 Kurds were killed ... Erdogan wants to send troops to Syria;
views the Kurds as terrorists; plans to go after them; what to do? Trump
threatened to devastate Turkey economically if Erdogan harms the Kurds.” And
they commented that they did not sense any kind of soul or spiritualism in what
the people on Earth think or do. It makes them look like automatons.
Capable
of changing their shape into the form that serves their purpose, a number of
extraterrestrial researchers took on the human form and beamed down to Earth
where they mingled with human beings across the planet. Their goal was to gain
firsthand experience at living like humans without their identity being
detected. To their surprise, they discovered that far from being soulless, most
human beings brimmed with an active soul. It happened, however, that a couple
of researchers encountered individuals who acted like automatons … of the kind
that was alluded to in the Benny Avni article.
Done
with this part of the mission, the researchers returned to the spaceship, and
gathered in the convention hall to discuss their findings. Each researcher
stepped to the lectern and described what they did, what they saw, and what
they felt was worthy of note. They were followed at the lectern by observers
who were sitting at the back of the hall, connected mentally to a
hyper-computer. Together, man and machine instantly integrated the information
they were hearing into hypotheses that represented something tangible.
They
came up with ideas that explained the discrepancy between the soulless
characters alluded to in Benny Avni's article, and the soulful human beings
that the researchers encountered on the planet. One researcher had described a
visit he paid to a video arcade where youngsters go to play games against an
algorithm. The alien researcher played the game to experience it personally,
and felt like he was turning into an automaton. And so, the observer that soaked
in this information, concluded that this is what happened to Benny Avni who
must have been a regular player at the arcade. Reduced to detecting only the
automatism in others, Avni became a filter that discarded the spiritual side of
people. It is what's reflected in his column, says the observer from outer
space.
As
to the second researcher, he said he was so intrigued by the last 6 words in
the Avni article, he went into every relevant nook and cranny to find out what
Avni meant by: “a bond now sealed in blood.” And he may have found the answer,
he said. In fact, he went into a film library, hooked himself via a subspace
frequency to the supercomputer on the spaceship, and spent the night viewing
thousands of old and new movies. He discovered that in movies they call
“Western,” solemn agreements such as treaties and weddings, are made official
and irrevocable by the mixing of blood taken from the parties in the agreement.
And so, the observer that soaked in this information, concluded that Benny Avni
must have been an avid watcher of old Western movies.