ichthyoid

While many today may disparage old stories as irrelevant myths and fairy tales, I think the old ancient stories have never been more important for our day. They not only allow us to see from the perspective of people who lived long ago, but I think that, if we're really paying attention, we realize just how humanity has, more or less, stayed the same, even across millennia.

Because of this—the lessons they learned—we can learn as well.

One of the most confusing stories I learned as a kid in Sunday School was the story of the Tower of Babel. In our modern world, we tend to think that uniting and doing things together is the greatest good that human beings can achieve. That in humanity's various races, sexes, and other traits, if we can somehow get this diverse group to work together, humanity will be at its greatest potential. And so this strange story about God coming down to man and causing division by language was deeply puzzling to a child like me, not to mention that it seemed a little mean.

As it turns out, no, it wasn't. And not only was it not mean, but it may have been one of the fundamental things for the survival of humanity. And in that way, it informs on so many of the problems of today's modern Internet.

So let's dive in.

The Story of the Tower of Babel

The story of the Tower of Babel is in the first book of the Bible, called Genesis, and is a short length of only 9 verses. Here it is in it's entirety:

1 Now the whole earth had one language and the same words.

2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there.

3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.

4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built.

6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them.

7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.”

8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.

9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

(Genesis 11:1-9, ESV)

As we can see, on the surface, it seems to be a story of humanity attempting to unite, and God coming down and breaking it up for some unknown reasons. And of course, the obvious question arrises as one reads: why would God—as the standard of ultimate moral goodness—divide humanity up with a confusion of language?

A Timeless Lesson

It's important to understand the context of the people saying, “Let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” This is a direct contrast to a commandment given earlier in Genesis (Gen 1:28, Gen 9:1). But why is there such an emphasis on dispersion? What is so wrong about people uniting instead of dispersing?

Notice, again, what God is saying in the story of the Tower of Babel. God didn't say that people were unable to disperse. In fact, He acknowledges the ability of human beings to do anything they want (verse 6). This would presumably, include dispersing after building the city and tower they desired (though it's implied that they won't). So what was so important about dispersion before the building could be finished? How does the building of the city and tower, around which humanity could theoretically gather around, conflict morally with the design of humanity?

My readers and followers may detect what I'm getting at here, a topic I've frequently write about. I'm talking, of course, about the idea of decentralization, and its necessity for human beings to live maximally moral lives as well as free ones.

The principle is quite simple: at no time in all of human history has a centralized authority been able to bring and maintain peace and freedom to humanity. In fact, the track record of history tells us that any centralization of authority will often bring the opposite. From ancient tyrannical monarchs to modern day communist dictators, when political figures claim all authority, corruption and suffering are very surely soon to follow. There may have been pockets of time when a single benevolent ruler did well. But in the long-term, moral corruption soon takes hold in any institution. This is because once a central authority is established, its prerogative is to keep and extend that authority.

This trend isn't isolated in small polities either. I've done a review of Walter Scheidel's excellent book, Escape from Rome, where he documents the effects of empire building (a trait of centralization) and why the fall of Rome and the subsequent decentralization of western Europe resulted in the far better lives we enjoy today.

And of course, I'm currently running through Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics, a book that provides proof upon proof that a centrally planned economy is always disastrous, while a free market where competition can thrive has, so far, produced better resultant societies.

This now leads us to the second part of the topic that I want to explore today — namely the modern day Internet, and how decentralization figures into it all.

The Centralized Modern Day Internet

It's not difficult to look around and see the uniformity of the Internet we use today. If we need to search, whether for websites or local businesses, we use Google. If we want to catch up with our friends, we use Facebook (or one of its services like Instagram or Messenger). If we want to watch videos, we go to Youtube, and if we want to watch film, we stream Netflix or Disney+. If we want news, or to catch up on world going-ons, we go to Twitter. And the behemoth of Amazon's online shopping is basically impossible to ignore (not to mention its web services).

Describing each of these services above may make it seem like the Internet today is quite decentralized. But notice how each service we use is associated with a single brand. Does anyone really use Bing? Not really. Let's hang out on MySpace! Said no one ever, at least, not in comparison to Facebook. And when was the last time you visited Vimeo or Dailymotion?

The centralized nature of today's modern Internet is an interesting landscape. On the one hand, we certainly do have a plethora of services to choose from. On the other, each of these services mentioned above actually serve very different niches, so much so that they don't really compete with each other. The lack of competition allows these platforms to do whatever they want with little to no consequence.

And thus we have an “open” internet that is actually not really that open at all. This has, in turn, led to so much censorship and banning that there isn't much of a case to be made against filing anti-trust lawsuits on these companies—except for the fact that, on the whole, politicians just have no idea what they're doing.

Of course, given that political authorities have little knowledge to truly deal with these kinds of oligopolies, the only true way to lessen their control is to provide competition. And so, services like Coil, Cinnamon, Parler, Ruqqus, and others have risen up. Time will tell how well these new technologies and services match up to the others from before.

Rise and Fall of Centrality

There's an interesting principle to be mined from the story of the Tower of Babel. First, there seems to be a certain tendency for human beings to want to wholly unite around something, despite historical precedent that says such actions would be detrimental to a large majority of human beings in the long term. Second, division is necessitated when unity reaches some kind of apex. What is that apex?

It seems built-in within the statements made by the people building the city and tower: “and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed.” In other words, when the priority becomes an intention for self-exaltation, to evangelize the brand above voice, to act against the necessity of decentralization, then it seems (according to the story) division has become necessary.

This is an interesting pattern that can be said to occur across all kinds of organizations, not just government. From social and religious groups to corporations and conglomerates, there isn't a single area in human society that doesn't fall under this pattern. The first time this was pointed out to me was while listening to Kenny Werner, a jazz musician, in a masterclass on Youtube, explaining how to master music (or really, anything) effortlessly. Here's the video:

https://youtu.be/-T4plqoEEwM?t=1562

I've started the video above at 26:02 — though, really, the entire thing is worth listening to. But the part that I want to highlight is when he said this:

In a way that’s where jazz has suffered for quite a while. It’s so respectful of the institution of jazz, that it doesn’t have any, or little, of the danger that jazz used to have.

He goes on to say:

It’s obvious why—the way we got into this thing about jazz and just honoring it as an institution—I mean it must be the same thing with religion...it’s just a feeling amongst everybody until we externalize it and make it an institution, and then we worship the institution. Then we don’t realize that the way the institution started was with beings who did not worship institutions. That’s how it started! It always started with somebody who was suffocating from the previous institution.

It seems like even musical genres can't avoid the dangers of centralization! And thus the cycle goes.

I hope this has been thought-provoking. In a future post, I may explore the other part of the story of the Tower of Babel that I find intriguing — that God divided according to language. But that will be for another day.

Until then, thanks for reading!