Sunday, October 13, 2013

God and the Tower of Babel

According to Hebrew myth, there was once a time after Noah’s flood in which the whole world (i.e. all the people who could be dredged up after God killed everyone) spoke the same language. These people decided to build a tower (actually a ziggurat) “to make a name for themselves” as one people, else they become divided and separate. God didn’t like the fact that these people were trying to gain power and unite, so he said to his god-brethren, “look, these people already speak one language and now they’re starting to coalesce their power to build a lousy ziggurat – I don’t like it! Let’s screw with ‘em.” The Lord went down and decided to rain on their unity parade by making them speak different languages, thus driving them away from each other. Moral of the story: don’t even think about trying to come together as one and potentially end all future conflict between different tribes and clans and languages and races, because God much prefers the strife that comes from division.

By the time I die I hope to at *least* know Chinese and Spanish; preferably, I’ll learn one more language for good measure. Arabic is an incredibly useful language to know on the business front, but my (very) brief experience with it tells me it will be a much greater strain to learn than other plausible alternatives. I could learn Japanese, but it seems that’s the popular thing to do right now, and I don’t know how much I like being on the bandwagon (I know, I’m that kind of person). I’m not infatuated with any others, though I have considered French and German as potential useful languages.


I hope I don’t have to read this out loud. This is literally as dull as a description of the weather. Oh well. 

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