The 21st Century Crisis of Son Worship

Judaism is probably the best candidate to be the culture that will cultivate superhuman intelligence from within. Why should we prefer genetic enhancement of our sons over artificial intelligence? On the tragedy humanity is marching towards in its choice of massive investments in artificial intelligence versus the complete blockade of research in enhancing human intelligence

If I had a son  (Source)

A passing Jerusalem Hyundai raised in my consciousness the question: what inner need is satisfied by a person who sticks a bumper sticker on their car calling to "Bring back Hadar and Oron"? The mobilization of a significant part of Israeli society for the sake of returning soldiers' body parts "home" brings the Israeli discourse of "bringing back the sons" to ad absurdum, and raises suspicion that it fulfills a hidden need, as if there is someone who needs another "Gilad" in their consciousness, and will settle for any substitute for it. In fact, even the original public mobilization on the issue of "bringing Gilad home" was distinctly disproportionate, as was the one dealing with bringing Ehud and Eldad back from Hezbollah captivity, or bringing Ron home, or bringing Yossele home, and like any mass psychosis, it caused severe damage to the issue itself - and no less "incidental" strategic damages. This is often attributed to the value of redeeming captives in "Judaism". However, this commandment has not existed as a practical reality in Jewish consciousness for hundreds of years, and it seems that the centrality of the idea of "bringing back the sons" in Israeli consciousness should be attributed to another source.

The multitude of kidnappings itself is certainly not an explanation for the phenomenon, because paradoxically, it is precisely the discourse of "bringing back the sons" itself that is the direct cause of the use of kidnapping as a weapon. Israel's adversaries often stand amazed at its psychological effectiveness, and are even surprised by the disproportionate reactions it creates - as happened to Hezbollah in the Second Lebanon War or to Hamas in "Operation Protective Edge" with the kidnapping of the three boys. If we look at other examples that stir Israeli consciousness disproportionately, from right and left, such as the case of "everyone's son" Elor Azaria, the "lost sons" in Berlin who need to be "brought home", and in the past before the withdrawal "bringing the sons back from Lebanon" - or conversely, how Operation Entebbe was copied in consciousness to Operation "Yoni" - we will be tempted to find a more basic explanation for the phenomenon of "son worship" in Israeli consciousness.

From its inception, Hebrew culture was built around "son worship" much more than around "father worship". From Isaac Kumer and the figure of the detached son in modern Hebrew literature, through the literature of the State Generation that obsessively dealt with the sacrifice of sons as the "silver platter", to the flawed son figures that came after them - Israeli consciousness is agitated around the figure of the "collective son" and harm to him. The matter certainly has deep cultural roots, such as the story of the Binding of Isaac, the story of Joseph, the casting of sons into the Nile, and so on - and of course the archetype of the Jewish mother obsessive about her dear son and possible harm to him. In contrast to the father worship in Freud's "Totem and Taboo", son worship touches on the deepest collective guilt feelings of the Jewish collective.

But all this also plays on a more basic need that the "collective son" fulfills in Israeli consciousness - and that is the need of the Jewish collective to perceive itself as a family, and to affirm its existence as such. Few modern nations are built on an active myth of a common father, where the entire nation is considered his sons, like the Jewish people. Jewish existence in exile, more than being characterized as an existence as a people, religion, tribe or even community, was an existence as a family. "My brother" - this is the Israeli term for a stranger. The intense emotions in public discourse in Israel do not resemble legitimate political disagreements but family quarrels. The animosity towards the left does not stem from its desire to "return territories" but from its negation of the family fabric itself - this is the depth of the accusation of treason. Zionism may have tried with partial success to create Western government institutions for the Jewish state, but it failed completely, and perhaps did not want to, in changing the mental infrastructure of the Jewish people. Kissinger was outraged that "the State of Israel has no foreign policy - only domestic policy", but a family really has no foreign policy - only domestic policy.

But how will Jewish consciousness - and at least, the Jewish family - cope with the expected decline in the value of the son throughout the 21st century? In other human societies, a drop in fertility rates is already noticeable, while Israeli society still sees biological continuity, perhaps as a reaction to the Holocaust, as a paramount value. But a very long series of trends - the intensification of fear of global warming and other potential technological catastrophes, the continuation of the sexual liberation revolution towards the pornographic era, the disintegration of the family institution into fragments and its replacement with a network of human connections, the change in moral ethos towards post-humanism and perhaps even anti-humanism, the digital continuity of man and consciousness in the age of artificial intelligence - are expected to challenge the idea of human biological continuity in an unprecedented way. The Jerusalem Hyundai may not yet suspect it, but Hamas is far from being the greatest threat to Jewish son worship. Will Judaism succeed in preserving the ethos of the son in the face of a world that is moving away from it? Are the sons lost - and will no longer return?

What is the meaning of bringing children and raising them in a world where artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence and newborn humans no longer have value for progress? Will our real sons be the spiritual sons - computers as students of man and his continuators - and biological continuity will be abandoned as a primitive idea that has become obsolete? It is precisely the centrality of the son in Jewish culture that can lead it to take measures that other cultures would prefer to avoid. As the threat of artificial intelligence grows and approaches human capabilities, the son worship of the Jewish mother and the investment in his enhancement could be the factor that breaks through the cognitive barrier against intellectual-genetic enhancement of sons. Today, humanity is preparing for the age of artificial intelligence using the well-known ostrich method: burying the brain deep in the sand. If this trend continues, the fear of humans superior to us will result in computers superior to us.

Seemingly, from a purely technological perspective, humanity may easily be able to defeat artificial intelligence through investment in self-intellectual enhancement - because in this race, as of now, biology has a great advantage over technology and its starting point is much higher. It is easier to genetically enhance our children's brains - in fact, we sometimes do this through marriage - than to build an artificial brain from scratch. But as long as all research in the direction of human genetic enhancement is completely blocked - ideologically and practically - and in contrast, research in artificial intelligence is funded with all the power that the largest companies in the world can offer with the help of the best minds and scientists - it is possible that artificial intelligence will precede humans in the race already during the coming century.

Between the two possible directions for superhuman intelligence: non-human artificial intelligence and genetic engineering of the human brain, the human direction is easier and faster and also much safer. In the development of artificial intelligence, there may be an unexpected technological leap of phase transition (for example, self-organization or emergence of consciousness), while in human intelligence, a gradual process of raising IQ can be built. Also, artificial intelligence is necessarily foreign to us, and therefore potentially more dangerous, than raising children in our homes with IQs of two hundred, three hundred or a thousand. A third possibility, of combining artificial intelligence with the human brain, raises its own dangers of breaking into the brain and taking control of it, or its addiction and loss of control over technology.

But all this does not help to reduce the intensity of human resistance to genetic enhancement of our children, for cultural rather than technological reasons. But the taboo on enhancing children can be cracked precisely in a culture that sanctifies biological continuity more than anything, and will not want to settle for technological or conscious continuity. What Jewish mother doesn't want a genius, successful son at home, that no computer can compete with? Therefore, while other human societies at the forefront of technology are losing their biological aspiration to build a home and raise children and are sinking into technology - it is precisely Judaism and its son worship that have the potential to bring human sons back home.