The Tower of Babel
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel(That is, Babylon; Babel sounds like the Hebrew for confused.)—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
The Lord, assailed by his insecurities and fear of usurpation, started confusing the people. He confiscated the bricks yet to be used to build the tower and started building his invisible walls of languages. Tribes formed and started going their own ways— to distant planes, mountains, valleys, and islands.
But, is that enough? Even two men sharing their thoughts will soon include the third. Two tribes will form a city. States will form based on mutual respect and balance of power despite the differences. Another tower in another Shinar will be built…
The Lord will not take any risk. He started to build walls again. This time, an invisible wall encasing every mind. Despite the apparent semblance in their tongues, no two humans speak the same language. Thus, we perceive another's fear and insecurities as defiance. Two lovers, except for an intense bodily deadlock, cannot express how they love each other. Two philosophers cannot agree on the fundamental points since the points are shifting in the quagmire of interpretation. A person is never to be understood by another.
Then he divided our individuality. He put up a wall between our reptile selves and the intellect. How often do we find it hard to choose what is right and what is in our favour? Our lower brain with its bodily energy wins most of the time. Succumbed to greed we wage war and cheat friends. Making kindness sparser, walking further and further, we lost the view of the tower in Shinar— our monument of civility.