The tower of Babel - response

The tower of Babel - response

it's a beautiful contrast, the symbol of the tower upside down, heaven on earth glistening towards the sky. The tower of Babel seems to have been based on a real structure, what really happened? Surely the anger of God towards people devouring the sun, the moon, in pride itself, would not have sufficed in him dispersing this great community of people. If God was just and wise, surely he would not sacrifice men’s peace, even for their atheist beliefs.

The biblical story of Babel as well as it’s symbolic meaning must be an invention of man. Just like sickness and pest was always pronounced to be a punishment of God.

Babel is a reminder that the works of mankind are doomed to imperfection. If you look closely at the paintings of Babel (e.g Brueghel’s) it’s often built on a slant, in other words the very basis of it is unstable. I think the idea of a slant is quite interesting.

It’s builders reaching the limits of possibility, never being able to fulfil their perfect vision of the world, were forced to give it up. The reasons must have been political.  Visions and revolutions often produce results contrary to those fought for, as soon as a goal is achieved the groups are formed and eventually people are at war again. Even worse, those who dream up these visions are often misunderstood, their ideas manipulated and sometimes even punished. Dostoyevsky was sent into exile, into a world he was striving against. Even Brueghel’s  famous painting of Babel symbolized how Catholicism was forced onto the Flemish.

An aspect  of Babel reminds me of Existere (the meaning of coming together & falling apart, also failing in some way). Another aspect reminds me of human vices, greed, power to control.

Can we speculate about an author proceeding what ever comes before nothingness? It seems a dead road. Perhaps a god will help people become more moral because of a promised afterlife. And yet religion has seemed to achieved the opposite. Whilst smaller groups may life peacefully and in good faith, the larger groups are at war with each other. I guess it’s all obvious stuff.

As opposed to the thoughts on a author find the concept of nothingness as interesting topic to think about.  Nothingness does not exclude the idea of the author. But it instantaneously drives us to the limits of our own imagination. Perhaps through higher consciousness we are getting closer to a concept or it’s meaning. But nothing still seems a difficult thing to describe as it immediately becomes something. It’s kind of funny that my concept of nothingness is closer associated to the colour white. And yet white seems a fresh canvas onto which we can add something. Can something come from nothing?

For Heidegger, all logic is swept away by the whirlwind of a more original form of question- ing, which we might call metaphysics (in the good sense of the term). The deepest question that humans can ask is “why is there something rather than nothing?” There is no real answer to this question, since Heidegger will not be satisfied with any causal explanation of how God or the Big Bang created the universe. The question is not meant to be answered, but is designed to awaken the fundamental mood of Angst.