Communication and Erector Sets

 

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."

- George Orwell, "1984"

 

So there is this story in the Bible called the Tower of Babel. 

 

From the way I understand it, a bunch of really smart folks, Mesopotamians I think, got together and started to build a tower.  The purpose of the tower was to help all these smart Mesopotamians get closer to God.  

 

Apparently God was not too pleased with the plan, perhaps he was afraid property values around the pearly gates would go down.  The plan must have come close to succeeding, because God did something about it.  And if the plan was doomed to fail, why bother?

 

And what an intriguing way for God to fix their wagon!  God reached down to the Earth and smote the builders of the Tower of Babel. 

 

And what a smiting they got!  From that moment forward, they all started to speak different languages.  And so the construction on the tower came to a halt, and they all wandered off.

Now, the simple thing would have been for God to simply destroy the tower, maybe drop a plague on the Mesopotamians, and that would have been the end of it.  Yet perhaps God's little remedy had another, less obvious purpose?

 

For one thing, the urge to build towers to bring us closer to God was never silenced.  We all still carry that impulse to get closer to God.

 

That innate drive still moves us, in ways that are both literal and metaphorical.  We strive to get closer to God through meditations, and to reach for the heavens in architectural expressions. 

 

Many churches, at least the ones that don't look like a pre-fab shoe warehouse, have spires that reach to the heavens.  That architecture is an outward symbol of our hopes to commune with God.  Or at the very least to insure that our thoughts and prayers are carried skyward.

 

Secular structures also favor a towering view of the world when the budget, building codes, and soil conditions allow it.  There is something that fascinates us standing in high places, looking down at the Earth with a God's eye view.

 

It wouldn't be too far of a stretch to ascribe the space race to this same impulse.  To travel out into the heavens, to see the other worlds that God created, and look back upon the Earth with a God's eye view beyond anything dreamed of 100 years ago.

 

Given that the impulse to approach God was not quelled when construction was halted and mankind scattered, then what was God's other reason?

 

Philosopher, linguist, and logician Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote,  "The limits of my language means the limits of my world."

 

So here are my thoughts on just what God was up to.   

 

Mankind's impulse to approach God was a milestone of sorts.  This desire was not one that troubled God.  This was neither a group sin nor was it a desire God wanted to discourage.  Yet God knew that mankind was not yet mature enough.

 

Mankind needed to populate and explore the Earth, and perhaps lands beyond.

 

Language, as Wittgenstein said, is a kind of limit.  The Mesopotamians had lived too long within a very narrowly defined environment, and that limited their understanding of the world, and their ability to have the wisdom needed to grow closer to God.

 

So mankind was scattered, as was his language.  He gained new tools to understand the world, new ways of expressing his thoughts, hopes, dreams, and fears.  Some languages were very similar, holding only subtle differences.  Some languages were wildly different, having no apparent common roots. 

 

Yet they all have one thing in common, they are all expressions of the human mind and heart.

 

Mankind's next challenge is to take all he has come to know and bring that knowledge into combined wisdom.  

 

So far we're failing that test.  We face each other with an almost impenetrable wall between us.  Instead of acknowledging what we have in common, and enriching each other with what is different, we fill the space between us with suspicion, and sometimes hatred.

 

Author Antoine de Saint-Exupery wrote, "Language is the source of misunderstandings."   There is a lot of truth in that statement, and it points directly to the irony of the situation.  The differences in language that could be tools for a deeper and richer understanding of the world have instead become blinders. 

 

It is even worse when language makes the divisions between us wider.  What begins as a simple misunderstanding is turned into warfare by self-centered egos.  That has to change, we need to find ways to make our differences enrich each others lives.

 

After all, we have a tower to rebuild.