Together Alone: Agentic Isolation and the Cosmic Rift
Tech Tribe Dispatch #361
💡 Think:
The First Temple, why was it destroyed? Because of idolatry, murder and adultery.
The Second Temple, when they were engaged in Torah, mitzvahs, and generosity, why was it destroyed?
Because there were Jews who hated other Jews unreasonably.
Which teaches us that unwarranted hatred is equal to idolatry, murder, and adultery combined.
— Talmud Yoma 9b.
The Sages trace our downfall to a fight in ancient Jerusalem1 —a spark of baseless hatred that set the Temple ablaze.
Kamtza was invited to a party, yet instead his enemy, Bar Kamtza came instead. An enemy was confused for a friend, and thus the resulting embarrassment brought about our destruction.
Kamtza and Bar Kamtza serve as the catalyst to help us better understand the nature of baseless hatred.2
Hate works in two ways: Yes it causes us to hate others, to loathe them, to embarrass them and escort them from the meal. Yet it is also the nature of baseless hatred to love certain specific people as well. By loving someone not as a fellow human being, but rather as part of an in‑group, we are led to the same sorry end as hate itself.
When we isolate ourselves, when we no longer can speak to one another, existing within siloed realities, then we lose something core to our humanity. Love without the friction of interaction with those who are not like us, is no love at all.
I see world very soon where AI removes the friction of human interaction. I record a message with my agent. It sends a message to your agent, which in turn records a new message for you. There’s no human interaction - instead an mechanized messages endlessly try to tweak our words to make them palatable to the other.
In a future of total algorithmic intermediation, two people may “communicate,” yet remain in perfect isolation.
Coded into reality is the archetypical need for connection3. The bond between husband and wife, between friends or between people working together, each one is a reflection of the desire of the Creator for us in this world. G-d wants to be felt down here in His essence.
The Holy Temple in Jerusalem was the locus for unity. When we lost that unity, then the Temple was destroyed.
Every act of disconnection is a recreation of that dissonance and destruction, this isn't a one time historical occurrence, but rather an expression of the cosmic rift that occurs when the divine is concealed and unity is lost - an experience that replicated itself from the very moment of Creation until this very day.
Yet this darkness is for a purpose, to reveal the light in this world and forge bonds that brings us together… the tools we made do not need to isolate us from those around us, if we proactively channel them into creating human bonds.
It is then, from a place of profound love, that we can be reunited once more.
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Discourse on Shabbat Chazon, Hemsheich 5670, pg 315 & 319