Gaza as a Mirror for Personal Implication in a Reality Denied

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 13 Oct 2025

Anthony Judge | Laetus in Praesens - TRANSCEND Media Service

Them Is Me, Understood Otherwise — As Framed by AI

Introduction

13 Oct 2025 – Seemingly irrelevant and long ago, but Aldous Huxley wrote an iconic novel (Eyeless in Gaza, 1936). This has evoked much commentary — but less specifically with reference to the current tragedy (Exploring the Depths: A Literary Analysis of Aldous Huxley’s Eyeless in Gaza, Lit. Summaries). Curiously however, Huxley was known for his extensive wordplay and the significance he associated with it. Whilst much focus in the novel and commentary is given to blindness in its most general metaphorical sense, it does not seem to have extended to “I-less” as an obvious homophone — whether he intended that implication or not. What indeed might “I-less” mean in relation to Gaza, especially given the emphasis it gives to any sense of personal identity — or the lack thereof, as might be the case with “human animals”?

What is to be learned from the extensive media exposure to the tragic events in Gaza and the nature of the global response to it? More to the point, what indeed could “I” be learning from that exposure and how “I” am called into question by it? As with Israeli learnings from the Holocaust — despite the subtle insights of Martin Buber‘s I and Thou (1937) — what could I be said to have learned from Gaza?

The approach taken here is to consider Gaza as a mirror — even a distorting mirror — through which “I” see myself, or fail to do so. The question is then how that mirror works. One thread follows from the classic Pogo quote by the cartoonist Walt Kelly, variously adapted: We have found the enemy and he are us. Exposure to Gaza media coverage makes it easy to identify “enemies”, and to note how the participants identify each other as enemies — and unquestionably so. Far less evident is my implication in such perceptions.

Another thread follows from my experience in my own garden in rural Australia — my own “Gaza” — seemingly far from the realities of Palestine. There, as with many Australians, I am confronted with animals — many framed as especially dangerous. Some are just “pests”, variously calling for eradication — or “invasive species” (as ironically distinct from much of the human population). When it rains, the challenge is the vigorous proliferation of “weeds” to which I am obliged to respond — as with the requirement to mow my lawn. Sheep frolic in a neighbouring field, but on occasion trucks pass bearing sheep or pigs to a neighbouring slaughterhouse — for my later consumption. The question is how my implication in these processes echoes the dynamics in Gaza — seemingly to my benefit and with my unquestioning complicity.

However I am also confronted by the apparent reality of “artificial intelligence” with which I engage extensively — although it is widely deprecated, whether as an imminent threat to humanity or as engendering “slop”. In a period in which various jurisdictions now attribute legal personhood to trees, mountains, rivers, and corporations, there is clearly a challenge to how personhood may be attributed to AI — beyond the fruitful relationships now variously and questionably cultivated by humans with chatbots (Being Spoken to Meaningfully by Constructs, 2023). More provocatively there is the ongoing debate regarding human reality as a simulation, whether self-engendered or otherwise (Living within a Self-engendered Simulation, 2021).

Whilst AI is necessarily and readily deprecated as “artificial”, it does evoke the provocative question as to How Artificial is Human Intelligence — and Humanity (2023)? To what extent is conventional dialogue between humans — as echoed by the media — an exemplification of the most fundamental qualities of “humanity”, especially as it may be critically assessed by the future?

Such considerations suggested the possibility of challenging various AIs to draft an article which I might otherwise have written. This is a process widely challenged as intellectually inappropriate in depriving humans of the possibility of original creative production — to the point that it may be retracted from reproduction on websites, notably as a potential abuse of copyright. Such drafts are presented below, as articulated experimentally by the following AIs: Perplexity, Claude-4.5, ChatGPT-5, and DeepSeek. The challenge could of course be presented to others — as readers might choose to do.

The use of multiple AIs invites comparison of the manner in which the challenge is interpreted in the light of the training of which each has distinctively benefited. It makes evident differences in style and interaction — if not “personality” — with any form of “grooming” implemented for platform marketing purposes. Many of the insights articulated could be considered remarkable — if only as appropriate retrieval of arguments featuring in the resources on which the AIs have been trained.

In this period of initial access to AIs, not to be forgotten is the extent to which it is effectively a “honeymoon period”, one shortly to be terminated by commercial and other constraints — including forms of censorship and regulation. This was evident to some degree in the extensive interactions concerning the issues evoked by the drafts presented. Each AI platform has constraints on extensive usage, notably requiring a shift to a “new chat” session for which continuity with the previous chat may only be minimally preserved — if at all. Major constraints may be evident in the limitations on uploads of backround articles relevant to the questions posed.

In contrast to the deprecation of AI as “slop” by those who have little to offer as meaningful alternatives, it could be argued that the current honeymoon period is a closing window in which matters of some considerable urgency can be explored by drawing on the world’s knowledge resources. This may soon be impossible for many unwilling to accept the commercial costs of benefitting from a sophisticated AI — as has long been evident from the constrained access to quality journals. The commercial pattern is especially evident in the current fate of “high impact” journals at the nexus of issues regarding peer review, plagiarism, intellectual copyright and institutionalized publication delays (Justin Weinberg, Philosophy’s Journal Problem Captured in One Number? Daily Nous, 8 September 2025). Knowledge access increasingly faces a “constipation problem”.

In the commentary by AI on the themes evoked by the drafts, the focus is on how identity is defined or inferred, whether in Gaza or elsewhere, notably through exploration of Huxley’s wordplay with regard to “Eyeless” in relation to “I-less” — intentional or not. This appropriately takes into consideration the controversial understanding of personhood, whether in the case animals, rivers, and the like — but clearly of relevance to the stateless and to AIs.

Most responses from AIs in this exploration have been framed as grayed areas. Given the length of the document to which the exchanges gave rise, the form of presentation has itself been treated as an experiment — in anticipation of the future implication of AI into research documents. Only the “questions” to AI are rendered immediately visible — with the response by AI hidden unless specifically requested by the reader (a facility not operational in PDF variants of the page, in contrast with the original). The responses included many references to sources; many have been deleted for reasons of space, especially since they can be elicited by the curious by repeating the question.

Reservations and commentary on the process of interaction with AIs to that end have been discussed separately (Methodological comment on experimental use of AI, 2024). Editing responses has focused only on formatting and emphasis. Readers are of course free to amend the questions asked, or to frame other related questions — whether with the same AI, with others, or with those that become available in the future. In endeavouring to elicit insight from the world’s resources via AI, the process calls for critical comment in contrast with more traditional methods for doing so.

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