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
I’m familiar with the tower of Babel story, but why did god confuse their language when they were building a tower toward “him”? I absolutely agree that the gods of social media have come down and confused many things for many people.
I coordinate programs for people 60 and better and most of them aren’t on social media so maybe I work in a last bastion where people exclusively connect face-to-face and hands-on the back of their Chair Yoga chair.
On the liberty and justice for all front, I’m on the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging committee at Hudson Guild so we’re doing our due diligence on a small scale. My aspiration is to make my little division, the NORC, a model Inner City NORC–one hands-on, mask-to-mask, interaction at a time.
To make the answer really short, this event took place right after the flood at a time when God told his people to spread out and multiply. God stopped the Babel project by screwing up the languages. I found a good accounting at
https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/the-real-reason-god-had-to-destroy-the-tower-of-babel.html