Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Monkeys recognize the self looking in a mirror

 Even though monkeys — as do most animals — instinctively accept as normal seeing their image reflected in the water of the pond to which they go have a drink, they get confused when seeing themselves in an artificially made mirror. Looking in that contraption, they tend to think they see another animal who could be a friend or a foe, thus respond accordingly.

 

But monkey trainers have shown that a primate as advanced as a chimpanzee can be made to realize it is looking at a reflection of the self. When this is achieved, the monkey is seen to experiment by touching spots on its face, thus see the move replicated in the mirror. The question now is this: Does the monkey believe that what it sees in the mirror, is real like the world in which it sits? If the answer is yes, can the monkey be corrected and made to understand that reality and its reflection are two different things?

 

If we can resolve these questions, we will be on our way to resolving the mystery of human beings who can be so riveted by the power of the fanaticism that’s imbued in them, they fail to realize there is a demarcation line separating the real from its mirror image. The result of that failure is that these people move back and forth between the two domains as if they were one and the same sphere.

 

We happen to have an example we can work with and see how far we’ll go trying to resolve that mystery. It is an article that came under the title: “State Anti-BDS Laws Pass the Constitutional Test,” written by Bobby Miller and published on February 12, 2023 in National Review Online. What we sense in this article, is the confusion of a writer who fails to differentiate between morality, which is the sphere of the real where nature has placed us, and the man-made laws which make up the sphere of the artificial that’s supposed to reflect that morality but miss the mark when morality and the law conflate by chance or by design. How can this happen?

 

Having gained centuries of experience at manipulating and exploiting the people with whom they mingle, the Jews fashioned the key they now use to help them maintain open, the door that’s supposed to separate what’s legal from what’s moral. Here is an example from the Bobby Miller article that shows how the Jews do it:

 

“BDS seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state. The stated goal of the movement, which frames the Israeli presence in the West Bank as an occupation illegal under international law, is to pressure Israel to withdraw from those lands; in reality, it aims to punish Israel, isolate it from the international community, and undermine its security. Tennessee became the first state to pass an anti-BDS law, calling the movement ‘one of the main vehicles for spreading anti-Semitism and advocating the elimination of the Jewish state’; the law described BDS as ‘deeply damaging to the causes of peace, justice, equality, democracy and human rights for all the peoples in the Middle East’”.

 

As can be seen, faced with the reality that Israel delegitimizes itself with its continued occupation of the West Bank, Bobby Miller reversed the logic of the situation by starting his discussion with the accusation that it is “BDS [which] seeks to delegitimize the Jewish state.” In so doing, the real — which is that Israel is the architect of its own condition — became conflated with the mirror image of it, which is that BDS “aims to punish Israel, isolate it from the international community, and undermine its security.” Thus, with the stroke of a pen, the aggressor became the victim, and the victim became the aggressor.

 

This being the case, the moral sphere of the argument — which is that everyone has the right to enjoy “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” without interference from others — was made to conflate with the legal sphere by asserting that BDS became a vehicle for spreading anti-Semitism. This being a consequential matter, it created the need for Tennessee-like laws to defeat BDS whose stated aim was said to be the delegitimization of Israel. And this is how the demarcation line between the moral and the legal; between the real and its mirror image, is erased, conflating the two spheres into one world where the fanatics dwell with ease.

 

With the completion of the conflation, the writer gains a lever he can use to weaken or destroy any moral stance adhered to by the existing culture           — if and when such stance would get in the way of him making his case. All that he has to do is contend that such stance will lead to an increase in antisemitism, and the world will stand in attention to listen to him. But when you study what the Jews do most often with that leverage, you’ll find them promoting a double standard whose goal is to force a universal acknowledgement that Jews are superior to everyone else.

 

Consider the following passage, presented here in condensed form:

 

“Anti-BDS statutes have drawn fire from Israel’s detractors and from free-speech advocates, who claim that the right to boycott is an integral component of the American experience that cannot be contravened. But according to a recent academic study, anti-boycott laws are nothing new either. Josh Halpern and Lavi Ben Dor trace a consistent tradition of regulating boycotts back to before the Founding. Those who attack these laws might consider how fighting against the antisemitism that underlies BDS would be a better use of their time”.

 

What the passage says basically is that as long as no one’s freedom of speech is violated, everyone has the right to boycott others or oppose such boycotts. The trouble is that it goes on to say in a very subtle manner that there is something exceptional about the Jews. It is that if you oppose them, you step on the third rail of antisemitism. You are zapped out of existence in an instant and gone forever.

 

This planet was not meant to be for the apes or the chimpanzees or the fanatics. We risk losing it if we abandon the eternal vigilance that made us good custodians of it up to now. So let’s renew our pledge to maintain Planet Earth in a healthy condition to be here for those who will give morality its due, and respect the laws reflecting that morality in its unadulterated state.