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 don’t understand each other because they speak different languages. It’s not just a matter of vocabulary: the problem is in the concepts and the meaning we give to words. 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, 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 was used 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 stopped from being populated consequently, since everyone was 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 impressed by a tall structure within the complex of the Embassy of the Soviet Union. The feeling we had was that it was a kind of lookout from which to distinguish every step of the city’s population.)

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

Diversity enables and promotes growth and development. The confrontation of different ideas and thoughts, the adaptation to climatological extremes and the unequal manifestations of nature, for example, require an intelligent and creative response to each situation.

The linguistic 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 and expresses its idiosyncrasies. The technocrats responsible for the Tower of Babel probably thought that when the top of the Tower reached the sky, they would discover nature’s most essential secrets. They would then become gods. Millennia later, however, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the authentic scientist recognizes the extent of his ignorance. One becomes aware that much remains to be learned and recognizes that there are probably limits to human knowledge.

While the construction of the Tower was a demonstration of the advanced technology of the time, society developed for other reasons, because of ideas and ideals. The basic notions of happiness and joy, spiritual contentment and 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 factors that are indispensable to achieve greater spirituality, capable of giving meaning to the human presence on the planet.