We Are Not Saved

I.
While listening to a recent podcast discussing the events of 10/7 I heard something that really stuck with me. The guest on the podcast explained how Israel had spent the vast majority of their planning and espionage resources on Hezbollah and Iran. This is why, when the time came, they had the brilliant pager and walkie-talkie attack already prepped. Additionally, they had a clear plan for invading southern Lebanon and for striking Iran.
By contrast, they spent very little of their planning and espionage resources on Hamas. The border was lightly defended, mostly relying on fancy and ultimately fallible electronic warnings. And they further assumed that Hamas had been "bought off"—that they were too addicted to the money coming in to do anything radical. This assumption ran so deeply that they dismissed the Jericho Wall document, which, in retrospect, laid out Hamas' entire plan. As such, they were completely surprised by 10/7. And even after the smoke cleared they had no real plan for invading Gaza. This led to a few weeks of delays while they come up with one, and even then they were forced to make up a lot of it as they went along.
This lesson felt like a metaphor for our own approach to large-scale risk. What is our Hezbollah? And what is our Hamas? What risks are getting a lot of attention, and what risks are being ignored?
It's easy to name our "Hezbollah". AI is currently completely dominating our discussion of risk, particularly existential risk. Arguably it's sucking up all the air in the room. In pointing this out, I'm not saying that's inappropriate. Hezbollah was a genuine risk to Israel, but even so it was Hamas who irrevocably pierced the Israeli psyche. And this brings me to my point. It's harder to name our "Hamas", but this identification may be equally important. And I'm willing to wager that when the history of 21st-century disasters is written, just like with Israel, our "Hamas" will end up being more important than our "Hezbollah". 
To be clear, this is my read on the subject. I don't have a crystal ball. Nevertheless, many people sense that civilization is reaching a point of critical fragility. Let's say you're one of them and you think something catastrophic (but not necessarily total extinction) is likely to happen before 2100—say in the next 75 years. Options for what might happen include nuclear war, an intentional pandemic, a gigantic financial crisis, etc. Now imagine that you're pretty pessimistic (I am) and that you place the chances of something like this happening at greater than 50%. Well then if your AI P(doom) is less than 25% then you should be willing to wager that "when the history of 21st-century disasters is written" something else will end up being more important than AI. Obviously these numbers are very crude, but I think you get the point: our doom may come from a direction we should be paying more attention to.
So, what is our "Hamas"? What do we risk being blindsided by while all of our attention is focused on AI?

I.
I attended the Faith Matters conference a few weekends ago. For those unfamiliar with the organization (most of you, I suspect) Faith Matters is an independent, privately run LDS nonprofit that defines itself as a "space in which an expansive, radiant approach to the restored gospel can be considered."
I attended a handful of sessions, and in several of them this "radiance" was on full display. But for the purposes of this post I'd like to focus on one in particular.1 This presentation started in an unradiant manner. The speaker opened by listing all of the problems faced by the modern world. I don't recall everything he listed, but I know that climate change and political unrest were in there, and possibly decreasing fertility. In any case, this list of problems culminated in the term polycrisis. A term I myself have used from time to time. That was the first half of his talk. The second half was his solution to the polycrisis.
Obviously a solution to all of our most pressing problems would be the biggest thing ever. In fact, if he could solve even one of the problems he had listed that would be a huge accomplishment! So, how did he propose solving the polycrisis?
Meditation…
This seems unequal to the task. Though maybe it was super special meditation? His meditative technique does have a greater focus on connection with others and opening oneself up to a "universal orchestra of meaning".2 So it's got that going for it, which is nice. Full disclosure, once the presentation took a turn towards maximum "woo" I kind of checked out.
When I say, "checked out", I actually had my laptop open and I was getting a little bit of work done while I listened, but I don't think I missed anything important. I'm pretty familiar with the many crises affecting the world, and I'll wager I could come up with a few this guy had never heard of. And yes, I tuned out even more as he started talking about meditation, but I'm positive I've heard that pitch as well. In fact it's the entire point of my post, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I should recount one humorous anecdote. As I said, I was on my laptop. I had a small software deployment that needed to be taken care of. About the same time I started my deploy, the speaker started his guided meditation section, asking everyone to close their eyes and open their souls to God. (Or something along those lines, I was doing a deploy, not taking notes.) This went on for a while, and eventually he asked them to open their eyes, and expand their senses and feel the love they had for the person sitting next to them. I did feel something from the woman sitting next to me, but it definitely wasn't love… Fortunately, I was on the end of the aisle, so I was only getting barely concealed annoyance from one direction, not both.
One of the people I told this story to said that she felt that the woman's annoyance was justified. To which I replied, "Of course it was justified! What kind of jerk works on his laptop through a guided meditation exercise! The point of the story is to shake your head at me, not her."
II.
This was not the first time...

I.
When I pivoted a month ago I stopped posting book reviews to this space, and started posting them to Notes. My idea was that I would then do one long book review every month and also link to all the reviews I had done through Notes, so that anyone who was really interested in my take on the great historical novel, Ivanhoe, or alternatively the queer, postmodern New Testament essay collection, Sex and the Single Savior could see that I had in fact opined on both and click through on whichever one actually interested them.1
That is still the plan, but on top of that I have the urge to use this space to ruminate. Whenever I ask someone to critique my writing they always say I do too much rumination, but what do they know?!? Sure, maybe they went to Yale or Notre Dame.2 But do they understand the public's deep yearning for kidney stone stories set in Edinburgh?
...
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After the Fall: From the End of History to the Crisis of Democracy, How Politicians Broke Our World
Author: Ian Shapiro
Year Published: 2026
320 Pages
Type: A compilation of thirty-five years of geopolitical regrets, like an old man looking back at the job he didn't take, or the girl he should have married—only the job was the Partnership for Peace and the girl was Russia.5 The old man is proud of a handful of things, like when he didn't sack Baghdad in 1991.6
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While everyone else is talking about AI, I'm going to engage in an exegesis of a single verse in the Old Testament, and yet somehow AI will still sneak in!

Is there some deeper meaning to the traffic cone on Sherlock's head? Or is it just silly vandalism? Most people seemed to think it was the latter, but I think it was a hidden symbol of some mystery. How could it not be?
I.
June 25 was the tenth anniversary of my blog. I understand that, traditionally, an anniversary post would come out on the actual day, or at least the same week, but I blew past the occasion without even realizing it. And then, even when I did realize it, I was too busy with other stuff to jump on it. In fact I haven't posted anything since July 3. I must have been overcome by the patriotic fervor of our nation's 250th anniversary.1
As a better person than me has said, it's self-indulgent, and even unseemly to dwell overly long on one's recent gap in writing. But this is destined to be a very self-indulgent post so I'm going to ignore her (obviously wise) advice, and explain the gap in great detail. July 3 was two days after my first experience passing a kidney stone. Then two days after that (July 5) I went on a week-long road-trip around the Pacific Northwest.