Tower of Babel

Dostoyevsky wrote about socialism, describing it as “the form taken by atheism”. He also drew a comparison between socialism and atheism and the tower of Babel, describing it [socialism / atheism] as “the question of the tower of Babel built without God, not to mount heaven from earth but to set up heaven on earth.”

I thought this image of the tower working in reverse was quite interesting. There’s a sense of topsy-turviness, where instead of the tower leading up to heaven, heaven is led down to earth. Who needs heaven when we can have it on earth?

In the biblical story the tower fails because of God’s intervention; he creates confusion amongst the builders by introducing different languages and as a result the building of the tower is abandoned. However, in the socialist version I interpret it as ‘we’ (humanity) that confound ourselves in our efforts to realise unattainable ideals. The image is of heaven as a production of humanity rather than the other way round which sees man and woman as the seeds of God.

Perhaps these two versions of the tower of Babel story represent the philosophical debate of existence and its origin; whether there is an author or God, or not? Can we, alone, manufacturer our own existence or does there have to be a higher author? Or maybe even, does it matter whether we have knowledge of a God or not because the outcome is the same?

I realise that this leads back to a similar territory that the black space occupies, in the sense that we are asking existential questions, but perhaps it also adds a question to those previous debates.

In parallel to this I was thinking about ‘experience’ and what it means to experience. Josch also had thoughts about this. I thought that this might be a way of moving on from the black space.  By looking at what is blocking our path forwards (the need to experience) and looking at the language and method that frames that project. 

I’ll add this later, I need to rush to meet Jon before our meeting at Arts Admin...