The Tower of Babel.
[quote=Genesis 11]
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, lets 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.[/quote]
If you have ambitions to reach to the heavens, say the Moon or Mars, you are going to have to get together with many like-minded people and communicate together so as to coordinate and cooperate. this is true even if you are a very stable genius, and whether you are capitalist or a communist. Indeed even to be either requires communication resulting in a mutual agreement.
And this agreement must be realised in concerted action; if one communicates agreement but fails to act, one is 'confusing the language'. And when that happens, there can be no understanding, no cooperation, and people are scattered, each alone and fearful of others.
This Hobbesian condition of anarchy, "poor, nasty, brutish and short" results not from the absence of a king, as Hobbes suggested, but the absence of trust. When I do not trust you, your words have no meaning to me, and I am alone.
People who are alone and lack trust must resort to manipulation. Coercive control can produce the semblance of cooperation, but it is unstable because there is no trust or mutuality. But trust and mutuality are themselves vulnerable to coercive control unless people are 'held to account'.
As long as there is a common speech, and all are held to account by it, so long will a society survive; but even a mafia needs an agreement, and part of that agreement concerns when the time for talking is over, and something is to be done.
A leader is someone who saw what needed to be done early, and started doing it. therefore one can judge the quality of a leader by what would happen if the many did what s/he is doing Kant's categorical imperative. The 'Lord' in this case was divisive and ruined the city and scattered the people. That might remind you of someone.
Here endeth the lesson.
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, lets 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.[/quote]
If you have ambitions to reach to the heavens, say the Moon or Mars, you are going to have to get together with many like-minded people and communicate together so as to coordinate and cooperate. this is true even if you are a very stable genius, and whether you are capitalist or a communist. Indeed even to be either requires communication resulting in a mutual agreement.
And this agreement must be realised in concerted action; if one communicates agreement but fails to act, one is 'confusing the language'. And when that happens, there can be no understanding, no cooperation, and people are scattered, each alone and fearful of others.
This Hobbesian condition of anarchy, "poor, nasty, brutish and short" results not from the absence of a king, as Hobbes suggested, but the absence of trust. When I do not trust you, your words have no meaning to me, and I am alone.
People who are alone and lack trust must resort to manipulation. Coercive control can produce the semblance of cooperation, but it is unstable because there is no trust or mutuality. But trust and mutuality are themselves vulnerable to coercive control unless people are 'held to account'.
As long as there is a common speech, and all are held to account by it, so long will a society survive; but even a mafia needs an agreement, and part of that agreement concerns when the time for talking is over, and something is to be done.
A leader is someone who saw what needed to be done early, and started doing it. therefore one can judge the quality of a leader by what would happen if the many did what s/he is doing Kant's categorical imperative. The 'Lord' in this case was divisive and ruined the city and scattered the people. That might remind you of someone.
Here endeth the lesson.
Comments (3)
That's not the King James Version. Here is the KJV for comparison:
Quoting Genesis 11 - King James Version