tower of babel
The Tower of Babel (Syriac: ܡܓܕܠܐ ܕܒܒܠ, Maḡdlā d-Bāḇēl; Hebrew: מִגְדַּל בָּבֶל, Migdal Bāḇēl) is a Near Eastern account recorded in the Book of Genesis. It is meant to explain why the world’s peoples speak different languages.
According to the story, a united humanity in the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating eastward, comes to the land of Shinar(Hebrew: שנער). There they agree to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven. God, observing their city and tower, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world.
perhaps never could understand each other.. language as too restrictive .. (language as control/enclosure et al).. begging to be set free to idio jargon.. et al.. begging a means to undo our hierarchical listening
ie: hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day..[aka: not part\ial.. for (blank)’s sake…].. a nother way
1. And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. 2. And it happened that as they moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there. 3. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. 4. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. 5. But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. 6. And the Lord said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” 8. So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city.
9. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.
— Genesis 11:1–9
The phrase “Tower of Babel” does not appear in the Bible; it is always “the city and the tower” (אֶת-הָעִיר וְאֶת-הַמִּגְדָּל) or just “the city” (הָעִיר). The original derivation of the name Babel (also the Hebrew name for Babylon) is uncertain, but it may come from bab-ilum, meaning “gate of God.” According to the Bible, the city received the name “Babel” from the Hebrew word balal, meaning to jumble or to confuse
Genre
The narrative of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11.1–9) is an etiology or explanation of a phenomenon. Etiologies are narratives that explain the origin of a custom, ritual, geographical feature, name, or other phenomenon. The story of the Tower of Babel explains the origins of the multiplicity of languages. God was concerned that humans had blasphemed by building the tower to avoid a second flood so God brought into existence multiple languages. Thus, humans were divided into linguistic groups, unable to understand one another.
or to better understand each other..? linguistic group-size approaching the limit of 1..aka: idio jargon
Themes
The story’s theme of competition between God and humans appears elsewhere in Genesis, in the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. The 1st-century Jewish interpretation found in Flavius Josephus explains the construction of the tower as a hubristic act of defiance against God ordered by the arrogant tyrant Nimrod. There have, however, been some contemporary challenges to this classical interpretation, with emphasis placed on the explicit motive of cultural and linguistic homogeneity mentioned in the narrative (v. 1, 4, 6). This reading of the text sees God’s actions not as a punishment for pride, but as an etiology of cultural differences, presenting Babel as the cradle of civilization.
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Multiplication of languages
The literal belief that the world’s linguistic variety originated with the tower of Babel is pseudoscientific, sometimes called pseudolinguistics, and it is contrary to known facts about the origin and history of languages.
In the Biblical introduction of the Tower of Babel account, in Genesis 11:1, it is said that everyone on Earth spoke the same language, but this is inconsistent with the Biblical description of the post-Noahic world described in Genesis 10:5, where it is said that the descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth gave rise to different nations, each with their own language. Some explain this discrepancy by saying that the order of the narrative is not the same as the order of events.
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A. S. Byatt‘s novel Babel Tower (1996) is about the question “whether language can be shared, or, if that turns out to be illusory, how individuals, in talking to each other, fail to understand each other”.
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have referenced several times (again ..luxury of app would/would-have connect\ed these for me.. and added them here – or would have already made this page.. or would not have needed any of it – whatever).. but actually adding page while reading Darran Anderson‘s imaginary cities..
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faced w vast swathes of land that revealed the extent of their ignorance,
the powerful in europe sought to fictitiously colonise areas they could not reach. it was an attempt at control and reassurance.. t
centuries before installing favourable dictators in client states, they did so w imaginary characters, one of who would be name-checked by polo.
1165.. jonhannes .. self announced ‘lord of lords’ it boasted of a kingdom to ‘surpass all under heaven’ which ‘extends beyond india.. towards the sunrise over the wastes, and it trends toward deserted babylon near the tower of babel..
imagining a world where we oscillate between idiosyncratic jargon (individual and tribe ish) and a sort of toki pona ness..
indigenous: originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native.. thinking.. occurring naturally in each soul..
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our maps can tell us stories of political machinations and subterfuge; all those straight lines and right angles cutting across tribal lands, mountain ranges, rivers, drafted by autocrats and bureaucrats in drawing rooms, decisions which haunt us to this day..t
much like one-language-ness does
given how much id is tied in w nationalism, it is worthwhile but troubling to consider how borders have shifted and countries have been born and have died..t
no borders.. no grammar police.. no exclusion via words.. beyond words
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the tower of babel was a multidimensional convergence of space and time, as all cities are
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(william) blake was a utopian prophet in an age of priests and, until he was safely dead and able to be exploited, they painted him as a madman..t
crazywise.. the reason i jump (film).. higashida autism law
begs a mech to listen to all the voices ..ie: via 2 convos
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from the right angle, the real becomes unreal..escher.. god’s eye view.. ..
daumier: ‘ there is a frightful disease prevalent in ‘the states’ contagious entirely beyond the skill of the best physicians. it is altitudimania and its victims, who rarely die of it, but can never be entirely cured, spend half their lives climbing steps’.. babel, for better and worse, offered us an opp to gaze back down upon ourselves..
perhaps idio-jargon (tower of babel) from self-talk as data can do that for us
keep us from climbing ness..
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this is a future life of leisure and farmyard robots, granted by the freeing of hours from rudimentary tasks. it is a utopia of time; the ability to waste time as we choose by being freed from the wasted time of obligations..
leisure.. gaiman luxury law.. obligations
comes from babel ness.. 2 convos .. via idio jargon.. setting us free to the day.. ie: 24 hours minus 33 min.. every day
today we have never had more labour saving devices of convenience and yet the blissful life is suspiciously fleeting and illusive..
begs we try a nother way.. has to be all of us.. leaping to freedom..
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even the great wandering novels of loners.. are intrinsically concerned w the multiplicity of the city and the characters’ alienation from it, searching as they are, in taunted solipsism, for the connections they see fleetingly all around them..
let’s try connecting us..hlb via 2 convos that io dance.. as the day.
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we are atoms, yet there is hope in what occurs when atoms link together
our walls may be oppressive but they protect us from the horrors of proximity..
how to hide and still be out there.. the walls of rp ness et al
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‘architecture is the great book of humanity’ victor hugo wrote ‘when the memory of the first races felt itself overloaded, when the mass of reminiscences of the human race became so heavy and so confused that speech naked and flying, ran the risk of losing them on the way, men transcribed them on the soil in a manner which was at once the most visible, most durable, and most natural. .. in the 15th cent everything changes.
human thought discovers a *mode of perpetuating itself,
.. architeture is dethroned. gutenberg’s letters of lead are about to supersede..the invention of printing is the greatest event in history. it is the mother of revolution.. the mode o f expression of humanity which is totally renewed. assuredly, it is a construction which increases and piles up in endless spirals; **there is also confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labour, eager competitions of all humanity, refuge promised to intelligence, a new flood against an overflow of barbarians. it is the second tower of babel of the human race.’ ***we are taking part in this building right now as you read these words
actually.. ***on to tower of babel part 3.. no..?.. where web/mech allows for **idio jargon as *mode
a mech to undo hierarchical listening.. to get back/to a nother way for 8b people to live .. in peace
imagine if we
imagine if we just focused on listening to the itch-in-8b-souls.. first thing.. everyday.. and used that data to augment our interconnectedness.. we might just get to a more antifragile, healthy, thriving world.. the ecosystem we keep longing for..
what the world needs most is the energy of 8b alive people
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be you. 