Ship of Fools: Is the tower growing higher? Ethnicity, war and Babel

Thread: Is the tower growing higher? Ethnicity, war and Babel Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I talked to second person this week who survived one of the wars of the 1990s in Bosnia and Croatia: relatives decapitated and shot in front of them by people they knew but from different ethnicities, concentration camps, refugees, get any country possible, transit camps, then get out to a country to live.

What's the problem with us? We identify differences among people and then want to exterminate those who are "other" and not "us". Created this way? - considering the biblical curse at Babel. Make foul choices all on our own? What is it with our possibly unleashing the beast within that can actually seem to glorify death and blood lust? But then Joshua has God telling the Hebrews to do it right?

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Just a brief comment on your metaphor...

quote:
Is the tower growing higher?

As per the story, if the tower is growing higher, that would imply humanity is still united, and reaching ever loftier heights of collective accomplishment, though possibly overdue for a sudden collapse into tribalism and war.

Whereas I think your point is that the tower fell a long time ago, and we are still dealing with the bloody consequences.

quote:
What's the problem with us? We identify differences among people and then want to exterminate those who are "other" and not "us".

When I was mugged the first time about fourteen years ago, I went through a period of a few weeks in which I had some pretty dark(and admitedly ludicrous) fantasies about the horrors I would like to inflict upon not only the muggers, but their family members as well. I won't go into any graphic detail, but let's just say your brain can go into some pretty twisted places when you're reculerating from a violent assult. Well, my brain anyway.O

Obviously, I didn't have the ability to carry any of those fantasies out with impunity. However, I can honestly report that I have no trouble understanding the emotions that might cause someone to get into an Us Vs. Them mindset, dehumanizaing not only the people who wronged him, but members of that whole group as well.

Hypothetically, if those muggers had actually murdered my entire family, and if(REALLY hypothetical here) someone had come to me and said "For a thousand bucks, I can make the same thing happen to their families, and your involvement will stay secret", well, I'd like to assure myself that I'd say no, that's not my style, etc. And maybe I would. But I'm pretty sure there is a hefty contingent of otherwise nice, respectable people who would fork over the cash and say "Go for it".

And then of course, the surviving members of the muggers' families have the same idea, and it goes back and forth, chicken and egg, etc.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I think both Stetson. Maybe it gets better and then gets worse in a cycle? I'm using Babel as a current metaphor and a historical myth both.

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

I think that dragging an OT legend framed to explain linguistic diversity into the question of human aggression is rather pointless.

What is wrong with us? Original sin seems a starting point. I do agree with the Anglo-catholic theologian E L Mascall that original sin is easy to see as a reality but not so easy to explain. I do not believe we existed in perfection in an edenic paradise, and rather understand aggression to be a somewhat baleful consequence of evolution.

SFAIK we are not alone as a species in showing aggression to others.

Posted by Og, King of Bashan (# 9562) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
SFAIK we are not alone as a species in showing aggression to others.

True, although we have developed a highly advanced knack for blaming hard times on "the others." That often seems to be how these things go really bad- when a charismatic leader or populist movement starts to claim that the group would be fine if they could just eliminate the influence of the other group.

Posted by Fool on the hill (# 9428) on :

I thought the point of that story was that humans were trying to reach the heights of God. Even my five year old son at the time, while reading that story, said, "uh oh". By the time, we got to the flood story he was done.

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I think that dragging an OT legend framed to explain linguistic diversity into the question of human aggression is rather pointless.

What is wrong with us? Original sin seems a starting point. I do agree with the Anglo-catholic theologian E L Mascall that original sin is easy to see as a reality but not so easy to explain. I do not believe we existed in perfection in an edenic paradise, and rather understand aggression to be a somewhat baleful consequence of evolution.

SFAIK we are not alone as a species in showing aggression to others.

Yes, I think aggression can be explained in evolutionary terms. But many animals also have good defensive manoevres; thus red deer do get killed during the rut, but a lot of them run away, to fight another day.

Humans seem to have combined aggression with tribalism, and also some kind of irrational tendency to global or universal thinking. Thus we can conceive of wiping out a whole village/town/people, and sometimes achieve it. Idealism is therefore very dangerous.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
What's the problem with us? We identify differences among people and then want to exterminate those who are "other" and not "us". Created this way? - considering the biblical curse at Babel. Make foul choices all on our own?

The problem certainly does not seem to be that we all speak different languages. Some of the worst atrocities are between peoples who can communicate quite adequately.

Nor is the problem religion as such. It's more the sort of tribalism that can be applied to ethnicities or nationalities or religious groupings.

A capability of demonising other groups - something to do with how the fuzzy logic of our brains conceives of groups of people ?

Best wishes,

Russ

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
The problem certainly does not seem to be that we all speak different languages. Some of the worst atrocities are between peoples who can communicate quite adequately.

I once became across a book on Ireland which began: "If the English remembered more history and the Irish remembered less ...". History, as in not forgetting or betraying "our glorious dead", dwelling on past defeats and humiliations, plays its part as well as language (though that, including accent, often marks you out as coming from one side or another).

Perhaps what we mostly need is more forgiveness and recognising that all sides make appalling mistakes ("But your side made more and worse", says someone).

Trite, but it might help a bit.

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
I once became across a book on Ireland which began: "If the English remembered more history and the Irish remembered less ...". History, as in not forgetting or betraying "our glorious dead", dwelling on past defeats and humiliations, plays its part as well as language (though that, including accent, often marks you out as coming from one side or another).

When I was doing research on Irish dialects, I read a great many books on Irish history, many written at least a century before. Almost all the books by Protestants told in detail about the terrible things the Catholics had done, while the Protestants were completely innocent. The books by Catholics told of all the evil the Protestants had perpetrated, while the Catholics were completely innocent.

This was in the 1960s when the conflict was heating up again. It occurred to me that it would be very helpful to write history textbooks that presented an accurate picture, and to have these textbooks used in Catholic and Protestant schools.

Neither side would have agreed, of course.

Moo

Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :

But it was the English who colonized Ireland. OK, we should forget some of the history, and not harp on about it, but we also need to remember some of it, in order not to repeat it, and in order to understand the present.

Posted by Russ (# 120) on :

quote:
Originally posted by que sais-je:
I once became across a book on Ireland which began: "If the English remembered more history and the Irish remembered less ...". History, as in not forgetting or betraying "our glorious dead", dwelling on past defeats and humiliations, plays its part.

There may be many things wrong with history written by the winners. But what is truly poisonous is a particular flavour of history written by the losers. Bringing up a child to believe that history gives them some sort of right to land they don't own, some sort of grudge against those their own age who happen to have grown up on the other side, that's really bad.

The great men of peace - the Mandelas and the Ghandis - are those who discard whatever claim history may give them to recompense for wrongs or sufferings endured, in favour of a clean start as equal partners in building a different sort of nation.

Your history is something to overcome, not something to limit and control you and determine who you are and who you hate.

Best wishes,

Russ

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