Daily Archives: April 20, 2022

Is it the Tower of Babel all over again?

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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, let’s 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.

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Mariner wishes sincerely that everyone would subscribe to the Atlantic magazine. It publishes articles that look at reality in a plain, nonpolitical way. Mariner cannot share adequately a real world metaphor in the May edition but the reader will get more from reading the article themselves at

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/

The gods of social media have brought down the tower called ‘United States of America’ – a land for which “nothing would be impossible”. We must, in some way, perhaps through small, hands-on, face-to-face behavior begin again to build one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

Ancient Mariner

Puzzled

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Mariner’s three alter egos, Guru, Amos and Chicken Little, are apprehensive. It seems the entire world is a pot of stew about to boil out of the pot making a huge mess. Perhaps it is similar to a hot air balloon slowly leaking air until the acceleration of gravity pulls faster and faster toward the ground. Perhaps it is more like a circus tent free of grounding stakes and the wind is growing stronger.

The rules that have governed mankind since the Luddites objected to new weaving technology in 1779 are unraveling as a new dimension of automation brings stress to the planet. It is a universal stress not limited to one circumstance like weaving or one nation like England, it is international, it is cultural, and it is personal. All the while the planet is tinkering with a new habitat for life.

Well into his eighties, mariner admits to being a Luddite. His reality began crumbling with the assassinations captured in the song ‘Abraham, Martin and John’. A poignant memory for mariner’s generation, the lyrics are below:

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend Abraham?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend John?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

He freed a lot of people

But it seems the good die young

But I just looked around and he’s gone

 

Didn’t you love the things that they stood for?

Didn’t they try to find some good for you and me?

And we’ll be free

Someday soon, it’s gonna be

One day

 

Has anybody seen my old friend Bobby?

Can you tell me where he’s gone?

I thought I saw him walkin’

Up over the hill

With Abraham, Martin and John

 

Consequently, today the race war of 1860 has never ended. The Camelot vision collapsed in the 1960s because of the unpopular Vietnam War and a growing conservative swing in local government. Also today, economic theory is engaged in a war, the philosophy of individual freedom in a democratic society is crumbling and international politics is collapsing.

So this post is about none of that. It’s about puzzles. There are two: the first is an exercise in arithmetic; the second, taken from a Zen calendar, is a true puzzle.

  1. There was a shipwreck at sea and Buck, Lance and Jack were washed ashore on a small island. Upon reaching shore they promptly fell asleep from exhaustion. A short time later, Buck awoke and saw that a box of bananas had been washed ashore. Buck ate one third of the bananas and went back to sleep. Lance soon awoke and upon seeing the box of bananas ate one third of what was left and then fell asleep. Jack woke next and assumed that the other two hadn’t eaten any bananas, so he ate one third of what remained. When Jack had finished, there were eight bananas left. How many bananas were in the box originally? [answer in next post]
  2. A quote from Niels Bohr: “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Is this plausible? Is it logical? Is this how conspiracy theory works? [Send mariner an answer, he doesn’t have one]

 

Ancient Mariner