GENESIS VI:9-XI

THE LIMIT OF TECHNOLOGY

The episode of the construction of the Tower of Babel, a building destroyed by God at the dawn of human history, has become the paradigm of the lack of understanding between people. They do not understand each other because they speak dissimilar languages. It is not just a matter of vocabulary. The problem is in the concepts and the meaning we give to words. In effect, the tower collapsed because those who were building stopped understanding each other. In addition, the completion of this building had become an obsession that, according to the Midrash(compendium of Jewish traditions), contributed to the individual giving greater importance to the loss of a brick than to the death of another human being.

What could have been the purpose of the erection of this Tower of Babel? One possibility is that it served so that people could find their way back to their place of origin, since due to its height it could be observed from afar. On the other hand, the rest of the earth could no longer be populated because of this, since they were all concentrated in the same area of the globe. It is also pointed out that the Tower was used to spy on people, because from its height you could have a panoramic view of the region. It would be a kind of control tower. (I remember that, during our first visit to Havana in 1988, we were struck by a tall structure within the compound of the Embassy of the Soviet Union: the feeling we had was that it was a kind of lookout from which to look one could distinguish every step of the city’s population).

Perhaps the background to this episode is that human beings wanted to assume the role of the Creator. They felt very powerful because of their skills in the field of construction. Perhaps they thought that they could create another universe, just as God had done. In addition, the ingredient of uniformity cannot be underestimated. Men wanted to perpetuate their pagan cults in order to curb any alteration or change of ritual.

Diversity enables and promotes growth and development. The confrontation of the variety of ideas and thoughts, the adaptation to climatological extremes and to the unequal manifestations of nature, for example, demand an intelligent and creative response from man for every situation.

The idiomatic confusion that God produced so that human beings desisted from the construction of the Tower of Babel had a didactic purpose. Language is not only used to designate objects and give names to feelings.

Language is a way of thinking. Those who speak Spanish think differently than those who speak German. Language reflects the cultural heritage of society. Language expresses its idiosyncrasies. The technocrats responsible for the Tower of Babel probably thought that when the Tower’s top reached the sky, they would discover nature’s most essential secrets. They would then become gods. However, millennia later, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the authentic man of science recognizes the dimension of his ignorance, is aware that much remains to be learned and recognizes that there is probably limits for human knowledge.

While the construction of the Tower was a demonstration of the advanced technology of the time, society has developed for ideas and for ideals. The basic notions of happiness and joy, contentment and spiritual enjoyment are not the result of any technology. Modernity has provided the means to alleviate the use of physical force at work, as well as indispensable tools for research in different areas. However, love and hate, envy and altruism, pettiness and generosity, feelings, emotions and passions continue to be the factors indispensable to achieve a greater spirituality, capable of giving meaning to the human presence on the planet.