The Tower of Babel

Our ability to talk to each other has given way to our passion for talking at each other.

The story of the Tower of Babel seems instructive now: after The Flood, men spoke a common language and built a tower tall enough to reach God. But God found it hubristic and sent them all over the world, taking with them their ability to understand one another. Today, to “babble“ is to talk unintelligibly and insensibly. We see it all around us: uncounted silos with a many people each, all unable to talk to people in other silos because all the listener hears is babble.

Take for instance the sad story of the 15-year-old Russian skater who was given a suspected performance-enhancing heart drug to improve her stamina. Thomas Bach, the chairman of the IOC, called Russia out, saying he found it difficult to watch this young woman, obviously in emotional distress, fall four times during her final free-skate program and tumble out of medal contention. Bach wondered why her coaches were so hard on her, or why they allowed her to skate when it was clear that she was emotionally unprepared to execute to her Gold Medal ability.

As if on cue, the deputy Prime Minister of Russia attacked the IOC, calling Bach’s completely appropriate remarks inappropriate. We live in an age where more than ever people talk past each other instead of to each other. One silo successfully bans books, while another tries unsuccessfully to ban assault rifles, or at least get universal background checks.

In the movement to neuter schoolboards and classroom teachers, Florida (because, Florida) is debating a bill that would have vigilante parents (primarily non-academics or people with any background in education) inviting themselves into classrooms to monitor, censor, critique and sue teachers. Imagine the cacophony:

"Hey, that's Critical Race Theory!"

"You're teaching abortion!"

"Slavery was not key to the antebellum Southern economy."

"I don't like your haircut."

"That book is liberal crap! It should be banned."

"You're teaching evolution; my granddaddy wasn't a monkey."

"I can't understand what you're saying."

Like religion, politics has crept into our educational system. There’s a Fresh Air piece that cites a school administrator in Tennessee who advised her instructors that if they taught the Holocaust, they must present opposing views. Opposing views?! Tell that to my mother’s side of the family who stayed in Poland in the 1930’s and fell off the face of the Earth. The introduction to the show says, “Across the U.S., educators are being censored for broaching controversial topics. Since January 2021, researcher Jeffrey Sachs says that 35 different states have introduced 137 bills limiting what schools can teach with regard to race, American history, politics, sexual orientation and gender identity. One proposed law in South Carolina, for instance, prohibits teachers from discussing any topic that creates ‘discomfort, guilt or anguish on the basis of political belief.’”

I guess it all depends on what you want to prepare your children for. You can prep them for the world as you wish it were, or you can prepare them for the world as it really is. My preference is that Fantasyland remain a section in the Disney theme parks.

I think we’ve out-kicked our coverage where technology and the human species are concerned, especially regarding the anti-social nature of social media. As Einstein said, "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots." The day he rued has arrived.

An attorney friend reminded me that reasonable people have become an endangered species, and that the Founding Fathers never contemplated a society where someone lying and being unreasonable would be aggrandized and celebrated instead of shunned. Of course they never imagined a world where everyone is connected to everyone else, and that its inhabitants would be able to simply pick the news they like, rather than being exposed to all the other “languages.”

So much of what a society does depends on most citizens operating from the same dictionary and the same rule book. It requires a common language of reasonableness. This expectation of reasonableness is what allows us to make decisions that are good for all. Yet we find ourselves in a place where even the definition of “reasonable” varies across political tribes.

We have people like the speaker of the Wisconsin State Assembly who think that it is reasonable to rescind the electoral count in that state, and forward a new slate of electors that would overturn an election held a year and a half ago. It’s another case of people speaking languages that are unintelligible to the rest of us.

It is division, more than unity, that defines us now. We need to rediscover our common language; the babble is too destructive.

Thanks to Bruce Sinton for his help this week.

©2022 Jon Sinton