Morality Games
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I was unsure whether to place this in Philosophy or Religion, but I decided it was a more existential topic in the vein of Kierkegaard and could be discussed by anyone.
One of the often overlooked stories from the Bible is the Tower of Babel. It recounts how humans speaking one language created a tower. God confused their words so that they could no longer understand each other, which resulted in the breakdown of the system of co-dependence that sustains a civilization. Consequently, the tower fell into ruin and humans split into many nations whose inability to compromise or negotiate led to many outbreaks of war and other forms of conflict, impeding the cultural and technological advancement of humanity as a whole. Usually people read this as a divine retribution for hubris, but rather than focusing on God's motivations, I'm going to read it through a different theme.
It is thought this myth recalls the destruction of Babylon or Sumer or both. The 'one language' is the Sumerian language and writing system (first of its kind) that was brought to many different tribes through an empire that spanned all the known world, or the Babylonian one, which succeeded the Sumerians and did the same. On another level, it could be thought of as a culturally significant snapshot of a extinction cycle that has affected humanity since whatever system of power that united our newly evolved ancestors broke apart and sent us across the five inhabitable continents, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is thought that the first such event was a volcanic eruption that destroyed whatever civilization we had developed and reduced our population to a mere 10,000 persons.
But assuming the Tower of Babel (whatever it was) was the first, I would say there have been a few other global power structures that have fulfilled the same role in human destiny, some of them existing simultaneously. The greatest, most influential, and longest enduring of them were the Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the United States/Soviet Union, although it can be argued that other, often overlooked civilizations whose contributions were diluted by history (Aztecs, Mayans, African Stone Kingdom, etc) function as "mini-Towers" that subsumed in the creation or ruin of the others. In any case, what these power structures have in common is that they united a great mass of human beings under a single language (Latin and English), facilitating their ability to cooperate and create economic order and technological/engineering marvels that would have been otherwise impossible.
The Roman Empire collapsed and mutated into many languages, repeating the cycle of conflict from the first Tower of Babel through the Dark Ages all the way to the end of World War II. Such was the fate of the Second Tower.
The duopoly of the United States and its alliances and the Soviet Union and satellites could be thought of as two towers, but their existence and success mutually depended on the other in the same manner as the Democratic/Republican parties on the two-party system, which makes it possible to think of them as partners as much as competitors. The global order of the Cold War itself is a the Third Tower. It ended in the late 80s when the United States outlasted them and incorporated many of their lost territories into NATO, making the United States and its allies the sole Third Tower.
In the 21st century, a Fourth Tower has risen: the increasing political and economic union of humans enabled through the Internet has almost completely overcome the ancient language barrier, resulting in a global civilization unparalleled in its magnificence and accomplishments, carried on through mega corporations, mass media, and the strategic partnerships of different political and private entities.
My big question is, what's left? Is God going to break the Tower again or is humanity on the home stretch to the "end of history", where all notion of 'challenge' vanishes from our condition.
One of the often overlooked stories from the Bible is the Tower of Babel. It recounts how humans speaking one language created a tower. God confused their words so that they could no longer understand each other, which resulted in the breakdown of the system of co-dependence that sustains a civilization. Consequently, the tower fell into ruin and humans split into many nations whose inability to compromise or negotiate led to many outbreaks of war and other forms of conflict, impeding the cultural and technological advancement of humanity as a whole. Usually people read this as a divine retribution for hubris, but rather than focusing on God's motivations, I'm going to read it through a different theme.
It is thought this myth recalls the destruction of Babylon or Sumer or both. The 'one language' is the Sumerian language and writing system (first of its kind) that was brought to many different tribes through an empire that spanned all the known world, or the Babylonian one, which succeeded the Sumerians and did the same. On another level, it could be thought of as a culturally significant snapshot of a extinction cycle that has affected humanity since whatever system of power that united our newly evolved ancestors broke apart and sent us across the five inhabitable continents, tens and hundreds of thousands of years ago. It is thought that the first such event was a volcanic eruption that destroyed whatever civilization we had developed and reduced our population to a mere 10,000 persons.
But assuming the Tower of Babel (whatever it was) was the first, I would say there have been a few other global power structures that have fulfilled the same role in human destiny, some of them existing simultaneously. The greatest, most influential, and longest enduring of them were the Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the United States/Soviet Union, although it can be argued that other, often overlooked civilizations whose contributions were diluted by history (Aztecs, Mayans, African Stone Kingdom, etc) function as "mini-Towers" that subsumed in the creation or ruin of the others. In any case, what these power structures have in common is that they united a great mass of human beings under a single language (Latin and English), facilitating their ability to cooperate and create economic order and technological/engineering marvels that would have been otherwise impossible.
The Roman Empire collapsed and mutated into many languages, repeating the cycle of conflict from the first Tower of Babel through the Dark Ages all the way to the end of World War II. Such was the fate of the Second Tower.
The duopoly of the United States and its alliances and the Soviet Union and satellites could be thought of as two towers, but their existence and success mutually depended on the other in the same manner as the Democratic/Republican parties on the two-party system, which makes it possible to think of them as partners as much as competitors. The global order of the Cold War itself is a the Third Tower. It ended in the late 80s when the United States outlasted them and incorporated many of their lost territories into NATO, making the United States and its allies the sole Third Tower.
In the 21st century, a Fourth Tower has risen: the increasing political and economic union of humans enabled through the Internet has almost completely overcome the ancient language barrier, resulting in a global civilization unparalleled in its magnificence and accomplishments, carried on through mega corporations, mass media, and the strategic partnerships of different political and private entities.
My big question is, what's left? Is God going to break the Tower again or is humanity on the home stretch to the "end of history", where all notion of 'challenge' vanishes from our condition.
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