On Monadology in Our Public Discourse (Column 664)

With God’s help

Disclaimer: This post was translated from Hebrew using AI (ChatGPT 5 Thinking), so there may be inaccuracies or nuances lost. If something seems unclear, please refer to the Hebrew original or contact us for clarification.

In this column I wanted to address the fanaticism that is taking over our discourse, where on each side there are unquestionable dogmas, prohibitions on heresy and on engaging with materials that don’t suit those dogmas (“do not stray”), and on exposure to heretical views that might, heaven forbid, reveal some complexity in the situation. My sense is that over the past two years the situation has escalated, mainly on the secular-left side.

Monadology in a Nutshell

The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz saw the human soul as a monad, that is, a unified, closed unit that is not in contact with other monads. Each operates independently, and what appears to be connections between them is not the result of directedness toward one another but of correlations—random or non-random. He viewed these correspondences as God’s action, but argued there is no need to assume He is involved in the process at every moment. In particular this applies to body–soul relations. To illustrate, he offered the parable of the watches. Imagine two clocks that, at every moment, show exactly the same time. How is their correlation produced? Either one influences the other, or the second influences the first, or there is a third factor coordinating them: the watchmaker who built them. This watchmaker is not involved at every moment, but constructed the clocks in such a way that a correlation would arise between them (both move at the same pace according to the hours of the day).

This philosophical theory is, of course, utterly bizarre and full of shortcomings. Beyond its lack of logic and its incompatibility with our common-sense worldview, it is also based on mistakes (some in calculus—which is quite surprising coming from someone considered, together with Newton, to be a founder of the field) and in fact solves none of the problems it purports to solve. Still, the concept of the “monad” seems to me very useful with regard to our public discourse.

A Look at Our Monadic Discourse

We talk and argue with one another, but this is usually an illusion. We behave like monads that do not truly speak to each other. Each is trapped within itself, and what looks to us like discourse is but a (weak) correlation, nothing more. Each monad is composed of people with similar views who echo for one another arguments and facts that reinforce the sacred dogmas of the monad’s priests and their believers, and thus each monad entrenches the absolute sense of righteousness among its members. I have dealt with this more than once regarding social networks (see for example Column 335), but it is also true of traditional media and of social groups in general.

This is a well-known phenomenon among religious groups, and in particular Haredi ones. There a formal prohibition on exposure to other views is customary, based on the verse “do not stray.” There are principles of faith that crystallized over the generations, in which one is ostensibly forbidden to disbelieve. On the (usually baseless) pretext that all of them were received directly from Heaven, they are not subjected to the test of critical thinking, even though their formulators (like Maimonides) actually felt quite free to establish them. I have often pointed out that this is an absurd prohibition, since you cannot limit a person’s freedom of thought and demand that he adopt a given position just because someone decided that this is what he must think (see for example Columns 6, 75, 576, 657, and more). My claim was that such a prohibition does not and cannot exist.

Yet in recent years it has become clear that this phenomenon exists—no less intensely—on the secular-left side of our social–ideological map. Later in the column I’ll bring an example of such a podcast that truly reached inconceivable levels of dogmatism and shallowness, and it is what prompted me to write this column. But we have a daily, obvious example of this: the newspaper Haaretz. It is a tabloid whose main concern is to meticulously and zealously maintain the community of believers and their dogmas. It is Yated Ne’eman on steroids.

I must say that on that side (=the sitra achra) the phenomenon is even more worrying, because there it comes with complete blindness to its very existence. The religious and Haredim are at least aware that they are prohibited from meeting other positions and facts. My feeling is that many of them inwardly also become insecure because of this; they fear encountering other arguments, positions, and facts because they estimate they won’t be able to cope with them. This is a case of positive feedback, where the trend of isolation feeds on itself.

By contrast with the “dosim” with kippot, the “dosim” without kippot—that is, seculars and leftists—operate within a monad no less closed, but they live with a deep self-conviction that they are precisely the ones open to all opinions, arguments, and facts, and that they form positions independently. All the while, in reality we are dealing with a fanatic religious sect in which there is a severe prohibition on raising opinions, facts, and arguments that do not fit the dogmas. A monad in every respect. George Orwell already noted that if one repeats some preposterous mantra enough times, the obedient public will embrace it as unalloyed truth: “War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength” (from his 1984). Haaretz, for example, is careful to have a token religious-rightist, usually moderate enough (Akiva Novick, Israel Harel, and the like—Gadi Taub, who strayed, was of course booted) who is given a platform from time to time so they can wave him about as a grand expression of their sacred openness and balance. I’m surprised that Yated Ne’eman hasn’t yet hit upon this brilliant idea that allows you to create within your fanatic community the illusion of openness. It’s a powerful fortification for your one-sided ignorance. You’d do well to learn from the very best. I must say: if Bibi and his friends are a “poison machine” (and they are), then those who use this expression are a poison machine on steroids (condemning others for their own flaw).

Let’s now look at a few examples.

The Podcast That Wasn’t Aired

There’s a podcast channel called “Radikal,” whose purpose is to bring the gospel of the far left and its ideas to the knowledge of the ignorant masses. I understand they feel that these ideas are not heard enough in Israeli public discourse and that it’s important to surface them for the audience’s consideration so it can form a position about them. They purport to focus on arguments and intellectual discussion—again, in contrast to the prevailing discourse. I’m not familiar with this channel, though I did now browse a bit among its nooks and was not impressed. Nor did I see anything there that doesn’t appear morning, noon, and night in all the mainstream media. At least in the particular podcast I deal with here, I did not see a single word that connects in any way to an actual argument or to the intellectual plane at all.

What brought the sad fact of this channel’s existence to my attention was an article I came across on Srugim, which described a podcast they recorded with MK Zvi Sukkot. Impressive openness for a leftist channel, no? Except that in the end they decided not to air it because it turned out too successful. Sukkot turned out to be someone who can present arguments, not the certified idiot they thought he was (this is what they themselves say). They decided to spare their intellectual listeners this painful information, and the arguments they offered for that decision are mainly of interest to scholars of religions and various fanatic sects (see a particularly brutal summary here, sent to me by my friend Roy Ozvits, who runs his own successful podcast channel and contacted me about precisely this while I was corresponding with Jeremy Fogel).

No wonder this has become one of the most illustrious failures in podcast history. By the way, for some reason I didn’t find reports on the matter anywhere that isn’t right-wing or religious. Besides Srugim I found reports on Channel 7, on Haredim10, on ICE, on Kipa, 103FM (of course with Arel Segal), and that’s it. I found no further hint reporting it. Ah, sorry, I also found in Maariv a report on a complaint filed by the “Religious Zionist Youth” about incitement against Zvi Sukkot. There too you will not find even a hint of the shelved podcast in which all that incitement took place. Is that not of interest to Maariv’s readers? This phenomenon merits a very extensive article, but I’d have expected at least a small mention in a piece dealing with the subject anyway. No wonder this glorious failure is not very well known in the media and among the public—it’s part of the monadic censorship phenomena I described above.

In short, Dr. Jeremy Fogel, a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at Tel Aviv University, interviewed MK Zvi Sukkot on the above podcast on the topics on the agenda. After the interview they decided not to air it, for assorted reasons (we must not give a hand or a platform to “Judeo-Nazis,” he came out too polished and articulate, it turned out he isn’t an idiot, and so on). They even went one better: instead of airing that podcast, they aired an episode about the episode with Zvi Sukkot (which itself was not aired). That podcast features Fogel speaking with Itamar Weitzman (the channel’s manager) and with someone else named Hila in the background (apparently in their religious sect they don’t show pictures of women)—they present selected clips from Sukkot, but not before “vaccinating” their benighted audience, i.e., bad-mouthing him and only then playing the clip. This is to inoculate their audience against Sukkot’s dangerous ideas. They clearly underestimate their believers, who supposedly require protection from heretical arguments, but the comments show that at least those who responded weren’t so stupid and didn’t buy this nonsense.

By the way, Weitzman was an adviser to Ehud Barak. No wonder that in their conversation two august figures were posed as counterweights to Zvi Sukkot. You won’t believe whom they chose: Yair Golan and Ehud Barak. I think that even if I tried very hard I wouldn’t be able to find two bigger fools more devoid of integrity. For some reason I didn’t see any disclosure there of the connection to Ehud Barak. Well, but those are truly trifles.

This podcast reached peaks of ignorance and shallowness that, in my opinion, are unknown even in the Israeli media swamp. Watching it is recommended only for the stout of heart. Since I previously knew Fogel (he moderated my debate with Enoch, and did four podcasts with me on God: “The Metaphysical Circus” A and B, and a debate with Eilam Gross on physics and God A and B), and I actually appreciated his integrity, I approached him appalled by what I had heard and raised my objections. We exchanged a few WhatsApps, and among other things he wrote to me that on some points I am right and there are parts he sees differently, as he may explain later. Meanwhile, I haven’t received explanations, and I decided to lay out the matter here. As I also wrote to him, my claims dealt only with the central points raised in the conversation. I am prepared to show anyone who wishes that there is almost not a single sentence there, even those uttered in passing, that holds water. It’s a collection of ridiculous comparisons, clichés, labeling, null arguments, ignorance, propaganda, and more. I’ve already spoken about the sect’s fanatic closedness and bias. Needless to say, all this is said with supreme certainty and sanctimony—truly Amnon Yitzhak for the believers of Haaretz. This is a clear, even if extreme, example of the monadology of the secular-left church.

My Words to Fogel

I will simply paste here the main message I sent him after organizing my arguments.

On the margins of my words so far, I will now bring two more examples of such monadology, which I will address very briefly.

1. Problematic Sugyot in the Talmud

The first example is a lecture by an ophthalmologist named Yitzhak Isakov in the “Coming to the Professors” forum, in which he talks about problematic sugyot (passages) in the Talmud. Here too it was quite shocking to hear a truly childish lecture by a person with very limited capacity for thought (he claims to have researched the topic for many years), who takes a complex text like the Talmud, extracts from it a few grotesque examples, and pronounces judgment on the whole. Beyond the fact that even the examples he brought are not really grotesque, and beyond his lack of reading comprehension and his childish approach to and interpretation of this text. The Talmud is an enormous corpus containing a vast variety of ideas and interpretations, in my eyes among the most splendid in the history of human culture. True, it was written in another time and place, but precisely its persistence and relevance to this day mean it must not be treated anachronistically. To form a position on such a text on the basis of a simplistic and childish reading of a selective, biased sampling of esoteric examples is truly foolishness. If there is anything one cannot call an academic discussion, it is this lecture.

What further horrified me were the audience’s reactions, which I understand was composed of professors. They sounded like a bunch of kindergarten children who were handed a punching bag to pick on. It was evident they don’t really know the text in question, and it was very convenient for them to join in the mutual echoing of contempt for the Talmud’s low and anachronistic chauvinism, for the primitive discussions found in it, and of course for the extrapolations made to our day. No one there really bothered to distinguish between the text and a few selected interpretations offered for it (which were also misrepresented). None of this stopped them from speaking with smugness and arrogance, with full self-confidence arising from not hearing other views and interpretations. Truly magical ignorance and academic thinking at its finest. This is the result of life in a monad in which only one kind of voice is heard. A tried-and-true recipe for shallow, one-dimensional thinking. It reminded me of the statistical argument I brought in Column 506, where I showed how five professors who came to a conference on statistical inference discuss the existence of God and fall into disgraceful statistical fallacies—all with assertiveness and arrogance arising from that same monadicity. Life in their monad includes echoing, dismissing, and essentially not hearing the rival views (incidentally, there too it was written following a podcast of Jeremy Fogel, in which a debate was held between the physicist Prof. Eilam Gross and me).

I do not feel the need to write a detailed response to this pitiable lecture (I’m trying to suggest that they invite me to present another position). I can only present the lecture to you so you can listen and form your impression.

2. Yaron Blum on the Hostage Deal

I will conclude with a completely different example. I have a feeling that the discourse in most of our mainstream media regarding the hostage deal is downright psychotic. There is a mass psychosis regarding the deal, and it rides on compassion for the hostages and their families, and no less on the fanatic religion of anti-Bibi-ism and anti-Ben Gvir and Smotrich. Within this abysmal discourse, anyone who opposes the deal is presented as someone who simply does not care about the hostages’ lives. The standard is to add that he is also messianic, fascist, etc., and is motivated only by political and coalitionary interests (as if consideration of coalition parties’ positions and ideologies were not legitimate for a government that operates by virtue of that coalition. Bizarre). Almost no one in the media (except Ayala Hasson and Channel 14, who of course are biased to the other side—who would have believed I’d speak in their praise, and in praise of Smotrich and Ben Gvir) raises the question of the price, and asks whether caring about the hostages’ lives justifies any concession, including leaving Hamas in place, conceding entire regions of the country (in the south and the north, which will of course then seep into the center—but then we’ll respond firmly with preventive actions) and the loss of civilian and military lives in the future. It is quite amazing that a huge population in Israel, including senior officers, security experts, journalists and commentators, politicians, celebrities of various stripes, and just plain people, raise—like a Greek chorus singing in unison—a preposterous and internally self-contradictory position, and do so with assertiveness and sanctimony as if anyone who opposes it is delusional and messianic (and betrays Judaism and the foundational values of Zionism and Israeli society). Of course, almost no interviewer tries to ask them a little question about their delusions. This is crazed brainwashing—truly a psychosis—exactly like we experienced around the Gilad Shalit deal. A fascinating example of monadic behavior.

One of the peaks of this sealed, stupid, monadic discourse was an interview conducted by Kalman Liebskind and Akiva Novick on their morning show on 25.8 with Yaron Blum, who was responsible on behalf of the Shin Bet for our prisoners and missing and for the negotiations for their return—among other things, in the Gilad Shalit deal (which also comes up in the conversation). He speaks about the hostage deal now on the table and his red lines. I highly recommend listening to this gem. Anyone who wondered how we reached the absurdity of the Shalit deal and indirectly what awaits us if the government does not withstand the psychotic pressure from within and without also in these days, will find the answer here. You can find the full interview here (on the program from 25.8, about ten minutes starting at 1:01), and some of the main lines you can also hear here on Twitter. If this is the intelligence of those charged on our behalf with negotiations and the war, no wonder our situation is what it is.

Make no mistake. Although in this interview the contradiction in the position of the pro-deal movement is expressed grotesquely, these contradictions exist in almost every spokesperson of theirs on the subject. The difference is that Liebskind and Novick (who belong to a different monad) asked and did not let go. Other hosts and journalists do not bother to ask these questions because they belong to the same monad as their interviewees.

And Finally, a Word About Military Commentators and Experts and… Bibi

In the past two years I have taken part in quite a few meetings with figures and leaders from the protest side—the Kaplanists, Brothers in Arms, etc.—even before October 7 (remember, there was the struggle over the reform, which now returns). I told them again and again that they are bringing Bibi upon us with their own hands in the next elections. They laughed at me in light of the polls in which Bibi was at a low (quite rightly). I told them that their psychotic protest would cause a trend reversal (it’s also written on the site more than once). And indeed in recent weeks the change occurred and the polls show there is a real danger that we will get again that same dreadful coalition in the next elections. Incidentally, if they continue with the hysteria around the reform (as they have now declared), they will bring that upon us too.

I myself have lately begun to debate whether to vote for Bibi just to stuff all these demons back into their bottle and shut them up. Well, I’m not there yet—there are limits. But I’m simply fed up to the gills with them. All these ridiculous officers and commentators who exploit their authority and their professional expertise—a’ la—only show us anew every day how much it’s worth. For many years I’ve said and written that there is no such thing as a military expert—or at least that his opinion has no added value regarding the issues on the agenda. I think that over the past year anyone can see it.