Tower of Babel
[related: Tower Myth, Etemenanki]
Refers both to the Judeo-Christian origin myth involving the dissociation of ancient languages and to the physical structure central to the myth's narrative. According to scripture, the antediluvian world was of one language until the building of the Etemenanki [1], a great Babylonian ziggurat dedicated to the God Marduk. The building was said to "reach unto Heaven", in effort to directly access God's omnipotence. Upon observing humanity's stunning ability to coordinate and innovate when bonded by a common goal, God became frightened and engineered the discrete division of man's common language into countless dialects, thus thwarting the completion of the structure. According to famed metaphysicist Julian Jaynes, the Tower of Babel is not allegorical but factual and marks the "tipping point" from bi-cameral to uni-cameral thinking in the Babylonian people. Here, the "loss of common language" is best understood as the loss of the internal "God voice" commanding action internally, leading to widespread confusion and panic. Instances of parallel etiological Tower Myths (under the larger Great Catastrophe rubric) are startlingly commonplace, perhaps marking widespread onset of global uni-camerality. Both Sumerian and Assyrian mythology include almost identical lore, and variants occur in the mythology of the Toltecs of Mesoamerica [2], the Tharu of Nepal, the Tohono O'odham of Arizona, and various indigenous tribes of Central African and Southeast Asia.
Traditional Buddhist and biblical scholars view the Tower Myth as centering around mankind's virus-like efficiency when laboring under the delusion of a collective "hardened mind" (as opposed to an Awakened Mind). From this angle, the multiplicity of concurrent Tower Myths throughout recorded history point to a periodic actualization of cybernetic loop feedback "crisis points" - moments in which misguided techno-reliance (i.e. the artificial digitization of Reality) results in the fracturing of collective semantical systems. In such cases, core destructive spectral forces appear to emerge from within the " Black Box" but are better understood to be a natural consequence of erroneous and harmful beliefs. Additional "crisis points" include but are not limited to: The Fall of Man, The Great Flood, the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States at the conclusion of the Second World War, Reaganomics, the Great Climate Crisis of the 21st Century [3], and, finally, the development of self-replicating nanotechnology, autonomous surveillance systems, and sentient forms of AI resulting in the purported eradication mankind from earth, beginning with the destruction of the greater Los Angeles area in the year 2091, as foretold by the "Book of Revelations".
- ↑ Ruins of the Etemenanki, once purported to stand over 1.5 miles in height, remain outside of modern day Baghdad, Iraq, and were further damaged in Operation Desert Storm. Initial destruction of the Etemenanki occurred by order of Alexander the Great in 300 BCE, concomitant with the commissioning of the Septuagint. Final ruinition took place on the orders of Antiochus I, a Seleucidian King originally intent on fully restoring the structure. While on a site visit, the King tripped and fell in the rubble, suffering great embarrassment, and subsequently ordered the Etemenanki's extant components trampled by a fleet of elephants.
- ↑ Toltecs were considered by Aztecs to be philosophical and spiritual predecessors, resulting in overlapping mythology.
- ↑ "Acid rain on the mirrored dome, loon birds wrapt in crystalline mesh. I watch the sea as it watches the wind, braces for impact. Calls out, over and over again, "Great Mother", and fills itself with itself, fills itself with ocean. Fills itself with tears."