We continue to see the horrific images coming from the Middle East. Images of the innocents wounded and killed. Images of Palestinian and Israeli mothers holding their 8 year old son or daughter as their child’s blood flows from their body while taking their last breath.

We see and hear of the weapons of war being unleashed destroying not soldiers but innocent people on both sides. There was a time when wars fought between soldiers, brutal and barbaric nonetheless, but civilians were usually spared such brutality and barbarism. In more modern times, however, acts of war nowadays result in more civilians, more innocents than combatants dying. That is the way it is.

The death toll of innocents in Israel and Gaza continues to rise. The weapons of war continue to be used against the enemy, against the others. The bodies pile up in the streets. But they are just bodies. Just part of a number that will continue to grow.

They ceased being human if they ever were human because others refused to see them as human, refused to see their humanity. They refused to see in them their own reflection. They are just another number. Another statistic. Another footnote to mankind’s inhumanity, savagery, brutality and bloodlust. There will be no winners in the current upheaval in Gaza and Israel. Nor will there be peace in that area of the world until Palenstinans and Israelis are both able to sit in their backyards under their own fig trees and none be afraid.

Today it is Gaza and Israel but the day before and the day before that it was Ukraine. It was Central Africa. Central America, Mexico, Haiti, Yemeni, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Myanmar, Somali, Iraq, Afghanistan, Buffalo, Uvalde, Charleston, Pittsburgh.

What is surprising is that there is surprise. The images that we are seeing from Gaza and Israel are who we are. Make no mistake about it, this is us. This is who we are.

We tell ourselves that we have advanced from the earliest days of our primitive existence to the point that we are no longer mere mortals but gods and goddesses ourselves. We have created our own world in our own image.

But, unfortunately, we fool ourselves. Despite all our technological and scientific accomplishments we have not advanced, have not evolved outside our primitive caves. We remain just as barbaric, primitive, blood thirsty, brutal, fearful and timid.

Yes, we have created the world in our own image. But it is a very ugly, a very barbaric image. The truth is that we are still primitive despite our smartphones, electric cars, skyscrapers, laptops, trains, planes and rockets.

Our flags, crosses, banners, pennants, symbols reflected who we are. We give allegiance to them while sacrificing our brothers and sisters and whatever humanity that we have. We take up our idol gods, pin them on our lapels and march into battle. We kill, we rape, burn, lynch, bomb all in the name of some unholy name. Always us against the others, us against them. Make no mistake about it, this is who we are.

We have stained the earth with blood in battles and wars, massacres, pogroms, slaughters, crusades, genocides, jihads, ethnic cleansings, holocausts, final solutions, racial exterminations.

The history of mankind from its outset to the present has been a history of unrelenting bloodletting. Collectively and individually, from Cain to Ukraine from city streets, classrooms, church, temples, mosques, synagogues, playgrounds, fields and valleys, the blood seeps from rocks, stones and caves.That’s just the way it is. This is who we are. Yet, we believe, we celebrate how advanced we are. How far we had come from the days of the caves. The evolution of humans, of mankind.

Scientists are hoping that with the development of Artificial Intelligence or AI, humans may one day develop a world where war, poverty, hunger, diseases are eradicated. It remains to be seen. Artificial Intelligence, scientists proclaim. will have the ability to look into the distant future. It will be able to look back into the past to the days when primitives sat outside their caves while looking with fear and wonder into the stars. It will also have the ability based on the trends of humans, other life and the earth itself to predict the future.

Based on its historical knowledge of humans, Artificial Intelligence might be forced to initiate the only rational and intelligent choice left to it. That choice will be in order to protect the very existence of the planet, animals, plants, Artificial Intelligence and life itself, humans the greatest danger to the existence of all life must be eliminated.

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