In the story of the tower of Babel they wanted to build a tower to heaven. God scrambled their speech so they couldn’t talk to one another. Stories like this are difficult for the atheistic mind, but what if we rewrite it?
Suppose that you’re living in an ancient city. Cities have collapsed in the past and this one wants to prosper. Why did they collapsed? They didn’t have a common goal. At some point in their advancement, people realized they had more to gain by defecting than by creating. People started to defect. Philosophers in the city spot this trend in their own city and become concerned. The commons are being looted. The rules that served the city so well are now being used to destroy it. Something must be done.
They see people’s lives are quite good. People want to reach for higher things, but feel that the current structure is too suffocating. They want to untie the structure, and yet at every step it’s not obvious the city gets better. They try measuring their equivalent of GDP and find that if falls short. It’s difficult to find something that doesn’t eventually degenerate due to Goodhart’s law. Anytime the city starts optimizing on a particular metric, it gets gamed to oblivion and ceases to measure what it’s intended to. They recognize that people need to have a reason to cooperate at scale. With greater scale, the city can achieve greater things. Eventually, they come to this: “be fruitful and multiply.” They still need a reason for even this. And they come up with: “be fruitful and multiply to go to heaven.” They don’t mean heaven in the abstract sense. They’re looking for a global maxima and reaching for the literal stars is a straightforward way to do this. They’re satisfied with this goal because it’s durable enough to serve the city for centuries. The public is initially skeptical, but slowly begins to accept this formulation.
Generations down the line, however, the goal warps into something unrecognizable. The institutions of this civilization are intellectually motivated to believe that the heavens are closer than they really are. After all, reaching them is a marker of success. They convince themselves that a tall enough tower will be enough to do it. However, since their reasoning is flawed, they don’t reach the heavens. Their tower is apparently too short. They recalculate. They bury their flawed reasoning under mountains of jargon. They keep building higher. This doesn’t work. People are embarrassed, and leadership in this city loses it’s confident swagger. The most talented know that something is up, but the totalizing nature of their institutions doesn’t make it easy for them to leave. Every aspect of the society is in some way involved in the grand project. The system works for them. However, the intellectuals are too smart to ignore the problems. They ask around. They form committees to get together and look for solutions. Committees from different institutions, then form councils to bring together the best minds from all over the city.
The public increasingly loses confidence in the tower. They start to believe it will never be completed. They question what value of completing it at all.
The institutions, see the public’s malaise and resolve to do something about it. They “know” the tower is good, but the public is losing confidence. Different people pin the blame on different problems. Some believe that all the new materials used by the city are leaking into the public’s water supply and making everyone unwell. After all, the city has many inventions; it’s not unreasonable that some of these have unknown negative effects. Some propose an herb to fix this. Some people see the knowledge institutions struggling and decide that a religious solution is best.
It is recognized that different institutions of this civilization cannot possibly work alone. They must work in concert. A significant portion of the citizens are suffering from drug addiction. Turns out one of the herbs made things worse. However, the herbs are too profitable for the institutions to step selling them. But this city now suffers from drug-addicts who are unable to work. The problems divide people within the city. The institutions keep coming up with reasons to tell the public why the tower must continue to be built ever higher.
Eventually, even the councils lose so much credibility that individual institutions no longer want to be a part of them. The herbalists cling to their theory that the herbs are the solution. The moralists claim that people have lost their moral roots and that we must return to tradition (they collect money in the pews). The technologists claim that people will regain confidence once they see major progress toward the building of the tower. The politicians claim that many institutions are greedily taking money for themselves rather than putting it toward the tower.
The public is divided. One side points to all the amazing things the institutions have been able to create. The other points to the problems caused by these same institutions. Distrust builds. People feel the system cannot continue. Some begin to retreat. At first, it is the wealthy who are able to do this. The public is outraged by the cowardice and greed of these people. Meanwhile, the institutions weaken over the course of generations. Eventually, the people are unable to deploy enough force to stop people from splitting off into their own communities.
Each community dedicates itself to different ideas about what is wrong with the civilization. Some believe the answer lies in medicine; others believe it lies in technology. They have their own vernacular (or language) for talking about the past and the future. The public feels that solutions aren’t coming. In order to survive, they learn to take from the outgoup since it’s evil anyways. In doing so, they go zero-sum. Any action can be justified against the evil outgroup, and there’s much to be gained. Institutions start to fail as the economies of scale fade away.
As society undoes itself, people become increasingly desperate for finding who they can trust, while also struggling to trust. Some begin to lean on family. There are clear reasons to believe that this is the answer. This works somewhat, but the concept is extended to the “extended family”, or rather genetic similarity. Or I’ll even put it this way: race.
The institutions are divided on many things, but they understand one thing: dividing people on race cannot possibly be good. The technologies accessible to ordinary people are too great, and too dangerous. The institutions seek to bring the families and races together. Everyone is taught to learn from one another. Interracial marriages are celebrated. But since people are losing confidence in the tower, they no longer share common goals. The pull of genetics begins to win over again.
People increasingly isolate themselves. They do not trust public resources. They want their own things. This is a threat to the institutions and the smartest minds find ways to prevent people from being independent. They raise taxes; they make it easier to rent. They pass laws making it difficult to farm. You increasingly need certifications in order to work.
Racism causes people to stop cooperating with one another. The institutions try to avoid this. They seek to educate children to be good citizens rather than racists. Though the racists are better able to cooperate than the non-racists, they’re unable to decide where to draw the line between who’s part of their race, and this question becomes increasingly important as they lack any goal other than a reestablishment of their respective race’s past glory.
One faction concerns itself with independence while the establishment struggles to maintain a coherent structure. While one pushes for unification, the other responds with rebellion. Those in the institutions first try to fight the various rebels, but individuals within these institutions have strong incentives to defect. People from within find the system they work under to be evil, and take from it on their way out. The institutions become increasingly corrupt, but this corruption also weakens them. They lack the capacity to execute on their plans. Too many low-level enforcers can be bought off by various means. Finally, the civilization reaches a tipping point. Nobody believes in the tower anymore, and if anyone did, they couldn’t get anyone else to help build it.
So what’s the problem? Maybe they built the tower the wrong way. Maybe it’s the wrong tower. Maybe it should have been something else. Maybe the original goal was good but has been corrupted. Maybe the original plan flawed, but correctable over time. Nobody can agree. And frankly, nobody cares. If there’s no reason to work with one another, why not defect against your neighbor? Everyone is driven by their own selfish need for survival.
I really enjoyed this way you explored the Tower of Babel! I'm not familiar with anyone doing that and found it engaging. I feel like this could be done with numerous religious stories...Now my gears are turning...