Recall that the tower of Babel is the last episode of the universal story of mankind, before the spotlight turns to the call of Abram. It reminds me of the "intertestamental period" between the old and new testaments. Let's shut up and learn something:
The intertestamental period (Protestant) or deuterocanonical period (Catholic & Eastern Orthodox) is the period of time between the events of the protocanonical books and the New Testament. Traditionally, it is considered to cover roughly four hundred years, spanning the ministry of Malachi (c. 420 BC) to the appearance of John the Baptist in the early 1st century AD. It is roughly contiguous with the Second Temple period (516 BC-70 AD) and encompasses the age of Hellenistic Judaism.It is known by some members of the Protestant community as the "400 Silent Years" because it was a span where no new prophets were raised and God revealed nothing new to the Jewish people (Prof. Wiki).
There's a similar period of silence between Babel and Abram, but who knows how long it was? In any event, I can't be the first to have noticed another parallel: that while the builders of the tower of Babel wanted to "make a name for themselves," it is God himself who wants to make a name for Abram.
This goes to the fact that you can't just make a name for yourself. Well, you can, but that's called narcissism.
So apparently, the juxtaposition of these stories goes to the distinction between celebrity and significance, or narcissism and true calling; for as Dennis Prager says, the famous are rarely significant and the significant rarely famous. The famous come and go, but only... x is forever.
Now, what is x?
X is what I am attempting to do now, and have been attempting for the past 16+ years of blogging. Am I trying to make a name for myself? God forbid! Am I trying to find out what God calls me? Yeah, that's more like it: for that is equivalent to finding our calling, our voc-ation.
Is this really my calling? I guess so. Unless you have a better idea.
Let's regain our focus: language. Recall what God says of the situation:
Behold, it is one people, and they have one language... now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.
What is it, exactly, that is problematic about all of mankind speaking a single language? It sure sounds like God is an early adopter of diversity, so much so that he facilitates it by confusing their language ("so they will not understand each other”) and scattering them all over the place.
Well, this makes perfect sense if we recall the true meaning and purpose of diversity (not the left's totalitarian version), which is always in the service of a higher unity and synthesis, AKA e pluribus unum and all that.
Imagine if there really were only one language. We'd so take it for granted that we would be like fish who spend their lives in water while knowing nothing about it. Language
becomes, when taken for granted, a hermetically sealed shadow world cut off from what is real....
[S]peech can no longer be used for inquiry, for genuine thought, for seeking after what is. When the units of intelligibility conveyed in speech have no independent being, when words have no power to reveal the things that truly are, then speech becomes only self-referential, and finally unintelligible. Even the name one makes for oneself means nothing (Kass).
Hmm. Speech becomes self-referential. Of whom and what does this remind us...
Ah yes: those "radical Foucault-like agendas and New Left goals that are antithetical to real historical understanding." Postmodernists
suggest that the search for truth is itself the prime Western illusion. Truth, they believe, is invented, not discovered....
It denies that there is a reality in the past beyond that described by language, and this barrier of language forever prevents historians from telling any truth about the past (G. Wood).
Wouldn't it be great if God could come down again and scatter the builders of this grotesque ivory tower of babble far and wide?
Come to think of it...
As we said at the outset, myth didn't just happen once upon a time, but happens every time. If Big Incoctrination were in the midst of being broken up and scattered, how would we know it until it was over? It wasn't as if the tower-builders of Genesis 11 knew right away what was happening to them: "Hey! What's with all this linguistic confusion and tribal scattering?!"
Again, there's that silent intermythic period between the Scattering and the Calling, between making a name for ourselves and God calling and naming us.
So now I shall put on my prophet cap and pronounce -- at risk of looking foolish in 100 years -- that college as we have come to know it over the past half century is indeed dead. The bubble has burst. And just as with market bubbles, when the last idiot gets in, it's time for the prudent man to get out.
That's it for today.
15 comments:
Two initial thoughts upon reading this post. First, like yourself, I've often wondered if I am trying to make a name for myself, rather than listening to the sometimes subtle guidance by which God can guide us if we would only perk up our ears/minds. Looking back to when I ran my old blog for almost 14 years, I'd say I was definitely trying to make a name for myself to parley into a more profitable means of crafting words into cash, rather than listening to what The Word was trying to elicit from my life.
Second, a thought on the one language aspect you delve into, and the confusion this was thwarted with by God. I'd say that even with the popularity of the English language, and media platforms which allow fast interplay of ideas/thoughts, most of which are of no value, confusion of language actually has been, or is being, accelerated. Self-referentialness reigns today, in many, many cases.
"...- that college as we have come to know it over the past half century is indeed dead. ..."
Thank God. And of course there's linguistic confusion and tribal scattering, that's what happens as a result of words no longer referring to reality. The house that PoMo built is the house of Babble, or Babel 2.0.
Imagine if there really were only one language. We'd so take it for granted that we would be like fish who spend their lives in water while knowing nothing about it.
Here is why it would be a terrible thing if the occasional attempts to simplify written English were ever to succeed. The very structure of every word we write tells us the history of how it came to be - and that history is far from unified! French, German, Latin, Greek, all tell the tale of how history has unfolded over time and imprinted itself in our minds, whether we know it or not. It's like discovering that what we took to be as common dirt under our feet consisted of grains of gold, diamond and precious gems, only unrecognizable because we never bother to take a closer look.
Wouldn't it be great if God could come down again and scatter the builders of this grotesque ivory tower of babble far and wide?
If the builders continue insisting on DIE within their own businesses, surely it will come to pass...
college as we have come to know it over the past half century is indeed dead. The bubble has burst. And just as with market bubbles, when the last idiot gets in, it's time for the prudent man to get out.
Yep. Of the young people I know, they are increasingly finding college has very little to offer them in the way of a real and useful education. Either they aren't diverse enough to get in to the really good programs, or the topics which would otherwise be good to learn are so bogged down with wokeism that it's worse than useless. STEM? Good luck with that, even there diversity matters more than ability now.
The main problem right now for many young adults is, "if not college, then what?"
Also, "how to find someone worth marrying and raising a family with?"
In all seriousness, it's hard to be young today. For many, the answers of the past don't really work so well in the present.
The main problem right now for many young adults is, "if not college, then what?"
When the subject comes up, with a young adult, I speak to them about the trades. Plumbing, electrical, carpentry, all of these trades pay well, after your early initial years on the path to becoming a journeyman in the trade. There are also the tool and die trade, the mold maker trades, etc. There are numerous small businesses such as these, still, in America, and though college, college, college, has been marketed hard to young adults, they'd be well served to seriously investigate the trades.
I don't disagree; in fact, given the opportunity, that's usually what I recommend as well. My younger brother graduated from UTI as a diesel mechanic, and it has been a very good job for him.
The young people I know right now are all still inclined away from blue-collar work. They're interested in coding and gaming (but not woke coding and woke gaming), and not much else, which narrows the options down tremendously. Nothing I can do about it, and they aren't my kids, so.. now what? Who knows. I'm sure they'll figure it out eventually.
My grandson has decided to not go to college. His mother is disappointed. Me, not so much.
Excellent !
Thank you.
Even a real major confines the soul to a narrow reality tunnel from which it may never escape. A fake major is just juvenile graffiti on the walls.
There is an illiteracy of the soul that no diploma cures.
Instruction does not cure foolishness; it equips it.
Man is an animal that can be educated, provided that he does not fall into the hands of progressive pedagogues.
That which is incomprehensible increases with the growth of the intelligence.
Anyone can learn what it is possible to know, but knowing it intelligently is within the reach of few.
From Rob Henderson's most recent newsletter:
"The strongest brand in the world is not Apple or Mercedes-Benz or Coca-Cola. The strongest brands are MIT, Oxford, and Stanford. Academics and administrators at the top universities have decided over the last 30 years that we’re no longer public servants; we’re luxury goods."
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