Our Modern Tower of Babel
A few years ago, I could not connect to a local community website. When I looked for technical support from my internet supplier, a young techie said he had never heard of the site. “How important could it be?” he asked. “There’re plenty of others.”
The community site manager was more persistent and, with cooperation from the company that provides their access to the internet, they stumbled upon the solution.
Bravo.
Yes, it’s true. There are lots of other sites. After my mother died, I entered the word “daredevil” into one of the earlier search engines. Anyone who knew her would feel the term described her well. I got less than a dozen hits and several were for her. Entering the same thing in my search bar today, I got 145,000,000 hits in less than a second. A hundred and forty-five million hits for daredevil, but I couldn’t find my mother.
How could I explain to the young techie why one single URL, one website that he had never heard of, was important to me and to our community? If one doesn’t work, blow it off. There is lots of information out there – one site not working is no great loss.
It reminded me of an insight that has flashed through my mind from time to time. In the Old Testament, one of the stories is called “The Tower of Babel.” It is Genesis 11:1-9 and is only 200 words long:
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar, and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Nothing said the Lord cared about the people. It seems that this lord was not acting alone either, but They were powerful. A common interpretation of the story suggests that this is an old myth describing why different nations speak different languages. That might satisfy a child’s question, but the Lord’s reason for destroying the tower was one suggesting fear: If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. That was the grounds for finding a means to stop the people from building their tower. Another interpretation was as a warning that people should not aspire to compete with the gods but should be humble and know their place.
What flashed through my mind was the parallels with us today. We aspire to compete with the gods and live beyond our means. While humility is grudgingly admired, we believe we are clever enough to beat the odds against being put in our place. We have built the fabled tower, not out of brick and tar this time, but as a scientific structure that seems capable of holding its own at the table of the gods. This time the tower fable is reflected in the complexities of our internet but includes our whole infrastructure. The same language that we speak and have spoken during this construction cycle is appropriately abbreviated as STEM, like the stem of a massive branch of a tree-like structure. It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. This fascinating language has even developed the equivalent of a priestlike hierarchy of knowledge. We have created a means of communication that can tell us in less than a second how many websites there are that mention the word daredevil. In fact, it tells us that there is now one website for every four people in the world. That’s a lot of websites. No doubt the young techie would agree.
We have our choice of social networks, newscasts, languages and ideas from thousands if not millions of websites that will confirm to us in clear, real web pages any stupid thing we want to believe. We have created alternate truths to respond to our individual demands. Websites will help you believe that the STEM high priests are a bunch of lying, deceitful, greedy manipulators. We don’t need the intervention of the Lord to confuse our language. We are doing it for ourselves this time. This wonderful modern system, the STEM, including the communication tower, is being conceived and understood through a whole array of languages, simpler to learn than STEM. The STEM speakers warn us that these languages are misleading us. Our system isn’t really working anymore and who's listening to the STEM priests?
The STEM is breaking. Our communications have become a chaos of online jealous little possessors of their truths. No-one is listening, and the sense of commonality is declining. We are becoming increasingly convinced of our truth as we lose our STEM language and watch the modern Tower of Babel tumble.
The community site manager was more persistent and, with cooperation from the company that provides their access to the internet, they stumbled upon the solution.
Bravo.
Yes, it’s true. There are lots of other sites. After my mother died, I entered the word “daredevil” into one of the earlier search engines. Anyone who knew her would feel the term described her well. I got less than a dozen hits and several were for her. Entering the same thing in my search bar today, I got 145,000,000 hits in less than a second. A hundred and forty-five million hits for daredevil, but I couldn’t find my mother.
How could I explain to the young techie why one single URL, one website that he had never heard of, was important to me and to our community? If one doesn’t work, blow it off. There is lots of information out there – one site not working is no great loss.
It reminded me of an insight that has flashed through my mind from time to time. In the Old Testament, one of the stories is called “The Tower of Babel.” It is Genesis 11:1-9 and is only 200 words long:
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech.
2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar, and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.
4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.
7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.
9 That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
Nothing said the Lord cared about the people. It seems that this lord was not acting alone either, but They were powerful. A common interpretation of the story suggests that this is an old myth describing why different nations speak different languages. That might satisfy a child’s question, but the Lord’s reason for destroying the tower was one suggesting fear: If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. That was the grounds for finding a means to stop the people from building their tower. Another interpretation was as a warning that people should not aspire to compete with the gods but should be humble and know their place.
What flashed through my mind was the parallels with us today. We aspire to compete with the gods and live beyond our means. While humility is grudgingly admired, we believe we are clever enough to beat the odds against being put in our place. We have built the fabled tower, not out of brick and tar this time, but as a scientific structure that seems capable of holding its own at the table of the gods. This time the tower fable is reflected in the complexities of our internet but includes our whole infrastructure. The same language that we speak and have spoken during this construction cycle is appropriately abbreviated as STEM, like the stem of a massive branch of a tree-like structure. It stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. This fascinating language has even developed the equivalent of a priestlike hierarchy of knowledge. We have created a means of communication that can tell us in less than a second how many websites there are that mention the word daredevil. In fact, it tells us that there is now one website for every four people in the world. That’s a lot of websites. No doubt the young techie would agree.
We have our choice of social networks, newscasts, languages and ideas from thousands if not millions of websites that will confirm to us in clear, real web pages any stupid thing we want to believe. We have created alternate truths to respond to our individual demands. Websites will help you believe that the STEM high priests are a bunch of lying, deceitful, greedy manipulators. We don’t need the intervention of the Lord to confuse our language. We are doing it for ourselves this time. This wonderful modern system, the STEM, including the communication tower, is being conceived and understood through a whole array of languages, simpler to learn than STEM. The STEM speakers warn us that these languages are misleading us. Our system isn’t really working anymore and who's listening to the STEM priests?
The STEM is breaking. Our communications have become a chaos of online jealous little possessors of their truths. No-one is listening, and the sense of commonality is declining. We are becoming increasingly convinced of our truth as we lose our STEM language and watch the modern Tower of Babel tumble.