{"id":39,"date":"2007-09-09T20:08:04","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T17:08:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/basbasbas.com\/blog\/?p=51"},"modified":"2007-09-09T20:08:04","modified_gmt":"2007-09-09T17:08:04","slug":"babel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/2007\/09\/09\/babel\/","title":{"rendered":"Babel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"small_su_logo.png\"<\/a>We are all familiar with the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. As I was walking the street, I suddenly realized that the interpretation of the metaphor, as it has been explained to me, is still too simplistic. For the people who are not very familiar with the story, I\u2019ll give a short recap. The purpose of this recap is also to help you understand my thoughts, because I\u2019m not very sure I know the Babel story perfectly.<\/span><\/p>\n

So basically, once upon a time in the old world, all people speak the same language. This makes it easy to cooperate. So they decide to build a tower into the skies and go have a cup of tea with God. After a while (they get pretty high, I guess) God decides he prefers the dead to the living and will have none of these people in his kingdom. So what does he do? He magically makes people speak in different languages (that\u2019s right, languages haven\u2019t evolved over thousands of years either, God made them). So now, these people can\u2019t cooperate anymore and they abandon the tower and spread throughout the world. That\u2019s the story.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe this is a spiritual warning. We must not try to \u2018be\u2019 with God through material pursuit. This is exactly what we are doing; we\u2019re creating a new Babel. The biggest group of people who speak English live in… China. We\u2019re all adapting to the Latin alphabet and the English language and are cooperating to redesign the world to make it fit our needs. For me, the metaphor of \u2018God\u2019 means the sum of everything, all life, nature, matter, energy, ecologies et cetera. So we use our intelligence and capacities to act out of harmony with \u2018God\u2019 which I interpret as the all-encompassing ecology. The more we act out of harmony, the harder it will strike back. Maybe next time \u2018God\u2019 won\u2019t divide us, but destroy us. The warning is there in the story of the Tower of Babel. <\/span><\/p>\n

So how do we avoid this destruction? Simple. Get down from the fucking tower and let\u2019s stop acting like Gods. Some people say that we can rape this planet, because \u201cGod created man in his own image\u201d, unlike animals or other life. So we get to make the decisions about other life, like God does. Well, let\u2019s turn this one around now and get more philosophical. I hate antitheism, because I dislike angry, arrogant atheists, they are just as bad as any other fundamentalists \u2013 because that\u2019s what they are; fundamentalist atheists. However, I believe that \u201cman created God in his own image\u201d, because we have very limited minds, we cannot understand infinity. We don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like to be more intelligent than we are, because you\u2019d have to be more intelligent to understand this in the first place. So God\u2019s depicted as human, because that\u2019s what WE are. We think we are gods, because we depict God as a man.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s make a list of the elements I know from the story of the Tower of Babel and compare them to current society.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
\n

Babel<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Modern day society<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n

One language<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Moving towards one language (English \/ Chinese)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n

The Tower<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Our quest to create our own world<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n

Splitting up in different languages<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Ecological disaster, scarcity, famine, war (sorry)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n

Motivators: greed, vanity, dissatisfaction with what we are given.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Greed, vanity, dissatisfaction with what we are given.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

\n

Mass cooperation<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\n

Globalism<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n


\nI bet there\u2019s a lot more. I think I\u2019ll read the story, because biblical stories or fairy tales are good vehicles for philosophy. Have a look at the work of Daniel Quinn for instance, he writes stories to educate about ecology.<\/span><\/p>\n

The art depicting this story always shows that they got pretty far with building the tower, so either God is slow and didn\u2019t understand what was going on until they got pretty close, or he\u2019s a sadist. Or maybe God\u2019s not a man\u2026 Maybe God is the force of the universe, or the force of nature to be more context-specific. If we pollute, there is no immediate repercussion. However, the more we pollute and the more \u2018advanced\u2019 (in our eyes) we become, the harder nature will strike back in the future. I think this is what the tower symbolizes. It shows what happens if we live in disharmony with all that around us, because of vain and greedy mindlessness. <\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t propose to tear this tower down right now. That would be crazy. We have a long way down first, so let\u2019s start walking. Downstairs we can live in peace, together, in one united world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Check out all the other religious traditions with the same metaphor<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are all familiar with the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. As I was walking the street, I suddenly realized that the interpretation of the metaphor, as it has been explained to me, is still too simplistic. For the people who are not very familiar with the story, I\u2019ll give a short recap. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,27,9,32,35,37,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology","category-essays","category-media","category-philosophy","category-religion","category-spirituality","category-thoughts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.basbasbas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}