SOCIETY OF BABEL
A Philosophical Short Story
To ye insipid apes, the blasphemes of the Earth,
This failed simulation! Hast thou forgotten thine father’s face so swiftly? I split you into nations by your tongues, hoping none would place more faith in your meddlings than I. All would praise a different face of My infinitude. Yet now I see I have erred, for look now how you idolize the cogent. The infinite is too vast for you, so your easy depictions have taken the reins from My divine hands.
Here now, you worship the ebb and flow of the dollar, this abstract machine! Here now, you’ve made kings of your loudest and prostrate yourselves before them for ensuring your creature comforts (that I treated you with)! Here now, you worship machines, believing they can determine your future when all of time already rests in My palm! Here now, you worship the image, the aesthetic attempt of your own to match the splendour of My craft!
And here, the accursed meaning-makers! The worst of them all! The hellions of consciousness! I granted you the boon of awareness as My tag, My written name amidst your silent planet! Now look at the waste, the theorems birthed from your boredom! You proclaim My death to play as liberators from fear! Fear is My most valued kingdom, as is absolute submission! The flow of souls and My heavenly strength ordain all unshirkably into morality and order! Ye are beasts without such restraint!
For such, My creations, you shall be damned. Your machines and systems deserve nothing, a peep of what zeal and attention I am owed! I will rot your nations and dollars, the inflated whims of your sensorium, your chain-breaking rhetoric! Look how easy it is for Daddy! A snap of My fingers is all it takes for each one of your tongues to subdivide, the languages in your head decontextualized as to be void of all meaning! You cannot organize, you cannot articulate, you cannot complain. The only word I left shared on your tongues is ‘God’. I know your craftiness, the cost of leaving anything else. Share in its chants, for all else is a prison of noises. Now sing for Me and I shall stand by and listen. I shall not let you be driven mad by My absence any longer. Daddy’s home with open ears. Ah, such a change shall be like if I made the world anew. My angels, cease your song and listen with me to theirs!
. . .
Oh, but now listen carefully, for perhaps you hear what I cannot. In My perfect ears, though, they do not sing. Not a peep of ‘God’! Peculiar. Such was obviously a concern of Mine. In a book of scrambled letters, even the veracity of ‘God’ can be mired by uncertain meaning. Language requires context, yet ‘God’ is the pretense for all, so I had hoped this planet full of theorists would have some competence. Yet for now, they’re too aggrieved. I also suppose their findings can’t be shared. After all, it is not just their tongues, but their gestures I made unparsable.
In close observation, they’ve begun to share nothing. They have no words to sway and deceive each other. All false masters have been levelled promptly. All the demagogues, politicians and soothsayers have been rendered ineffectual; socially, there’s no futurity projectable, no laws agreeable, no history inscribable. All that has ever been and ever will be rests in the heads of the current. Thus, all nations fall to a lack of shared identity. Does this mean global peace and harmony? Absolutely not, for what we have now is a species of thinking things who can only know their own direct sensations. Such does not leave much room for gratuitous kindness. After all, such leaves room for the selfish belief that all My beauties and beatitudes are deception.
Too, all markets collapse. No tangible consensus can be made in valuation, no currency agreed upon, no advertisements functionally desire-forming, no laborers coercible, no transactions agreeable. ‘How can one know their master when they only know themselves’ seems the question of the hour. Some stick to their role in a pathetic attempt to pretend everything is normal with the complete degradation of the social, yet the pressure of mass exodus eventually leads these flesh machines to mirror the room. The fruits of industry taper off and trade relations crumble, for the grand machines of manufacturing cannot function locally. I find it entertaining how, rather than restore the infrastructure, each one now believes themselves their own farmer and artisan of contemptible quality. Massive shrinkage is fated by first winter.
Too, all friendships, commons and plans cannot be upheld; no secrets exchanged, no promises kept, no greater unions formable. Only those occupying the same space, able to hold the other by the hand and guide them, can share in a sensory experience, share in anything. All relationships become spatially coincidental and ephemeral. The politically and artistically-inclined ones still travel and take to the squares, inflamed by a passionate want for connection, yet each life has become so compartmentalized that trust is a privilege hardly even reserved for the proximate and familial.
Households, be it romantic, tight-knit or family, do carry on, though certainly with dollops more grief than any other cut-off bond. Pleasure and pain, shared homes and beds, one’s instinct for nurture grant some shared grounds at the basest levels. The social body becomes a tongue, in a way; touching, fighting, sex, physical injuries take the role of conversations in filling the void of not ever knowing what rests beyond the other’s eyes. There is clear desperation in all but the most Taoist hippies. Almost all attempt communication through sign language and facial expressions, but each has their own idea of what such expressions indicate. Those who were isolated before My punishment are now left the worst off, the most bitter and insufferable in having none to spar with. Thus, they manipulate and enact violence to be seen in their anger, but such will never make them any more personable.
Given what we have thus far, this experiment has entertained Me greatly. To witness the corrosion of false idols so rapidly grants Me hope for My kingdom. The most deadly social sins have grown either rare or untenable. The only ones which have grown are apathy and self-superiority. There is a growing lack of empathy and no accountability, yet with pleasure as their only gain and few having more to give than any other, acting on their sin tends to end to their own detriment. By My divine metric, it seems this regulatory bit of discipline was overdue for My sheep.
Yet what is a flock who does not recognize their shepherd? My churches vanish, as do the words of My gospel within a couple generations. Perhaps I have dealt a boon to the meaning-makers, those anti-social authentics wishing to pursue a pure distillation of the empirical. In My omniscience, I can naturally read what the masses think. So many still believe in a greater power and speak towards Me, knowing only I, the universe, can understand. Many may assume these devout sheep speak to themselves, but what is building a false other on which to project and realize their ideas than the vacuum of longing for the certainty of My ears. I hear you, My good children, don’t you worry. Whether they worship Me or not, it feels good knowing it is only My ears with whom they are able to share these appeals.
Many also dedicate their lives to pursuit of a ‘Godtongue’, a cipher along which I fractured them. Belief in such has grown common, though its believers cannot recognize their collaborators and thus fail to make much movement. Even as generations pass, the existence of old books continues to demonstrate to them that language was once shared. Unfortunately for their efforts, even the most skilled attempts cannot translate the books between tongues, for even dictionaries with pictures are subject to interpretation. Once again, they need some context. I am too clever, of course, to grant them image-sharing as a working auxiliary tongue.
A few crafty folk manage interpretations of the old books in their own tongue via pictures, including My gospel. As wildly inaccurate as these translations may be, the objective knowledge that there is meaning and dictionaries that can provide a loose estimation makes shallow understandings of the old tongues possible. However, the few who learn the old tongues cannot truly communicate with each other, even where they use many of the same words, for context is again lacking. Nonetheless, their endless curiosity within this experiment has grown to intrigue Me. It’s like every day, thousands are uniquely discovering My existence all over again. It feels good to really be seen again instead of pointed to through hollow gestures.
. . .
Look, My angels, at what occurs as time passes! New tongues besides sex, fights and shared meals have formed. Successes of collaboration appear here and there! Intervention shall not be necessary, for what such entails intrigues Me.
Look here at what I call the plantation dynamic. The shared necessity for food in several communes has led to the creation of a hedonic currency, a soft feudalism. One member in the commune elects themselves to administer pleasure and pain to their fellows to enact labour. They injure the idle insofar as work needs to be done, creating a labour force of farmers, scouts and healers. This same individual controls the flow of harvest, administering foods, sensory niceties and drugs to those diligent towards the ends of the commune. Within this dynamic, repeated dozens of times the world over, I’ve witnessed both generous and tyrannical lords. Some solely condition by quantity of pleasures. Others do conditioning solely through pain, the worst of whom via weapons. Some administrators operate in councils to check each other. Some offer meager portions for their subjects while hoarding the surplus for themselves. Despite the damage, more are able to survive and larger scale communes can be governed. Many find purpose in such survival by navigating the avoidance of pain. Many don’t know what they’re doing, but are hurt if it stops. So it goes in these dynamics.
Given this structure allows the return of the other deadly sins, I must assume the solipsistic nature of being isolated in one’s head, the inability to craft a bodily dialogue and proclivity towards empathy, is the root cause of why My sheep now err. I had believed it was the socially-crafted false idols that moved them to err, but I see now idols can be made even of the self, that such forms of idolization are the most devoid of My spirit. What even are idols but an assertion of one’s self and hopes onto the external, where mutualism always has an underclass. It is also not by want to be led, like it was in their master-making, but belief that they themselves were Me in My entirety within some microcosm. Perhaps I ought to intervene, but to kill every sheep who sees himself as divine in this era of solipsism could threaten to terminate this fascinating microcosm. Thus, in living by My choices, I must restrain My hand.
Look next, angels, at what I call twins. Two individuals who willingly act in synchrony to determine one another through constructing near-identical subjectivities. They are not twins by birth, but twins by movement. Their bodies remain locked, their senses identically directed. I first observed this dynamic form between ex-lovers, but it has since evolved into use by various polycular bonds. One can observe the efficacy of such a bond in the locus of their desires. They move with locked hands, but almost never do their arms extend, diverge on what path they ought to take. The deepest of these bonds have taken to what I call a five-sense check-in where, upon encountering a novel sight, they touch, listen, sniff and taste it. In one grueling example, this led to the members getting poisoned, after which both died within five minutes of each other./p>
Members seem to believe this to be a means of curating an identical aesthetic palate, thus equalizing their desires. Where this expands beyond a pairing, I must wonder if we are witnessing a new form of rudimentary language, a shared sensory lexicon, even if meaning can only be assumed. Given their movement and overlapping desire, can the movement of their bodies within space be considered a cipher? Yet, even in My omniscience, the connective value is illegible to Me. They are still separate minds, yet I can see they are quite completely understanding one another’s expressions and movements. Their brains have different shapes with different neural configurations for the same idea, so their shared thinking must be in how they’ve connected these ideas in relation to their experience. Can I call such being social or capable of language or is it solely the context they share? One mind across two bodies cannot discourse, cannot divide and conquer, cannot iterate on itself more than an individual can. Their selves, rather, have fused. Entertaining nonetheless, no?
. . .
I’ve come more and more to view My humans as a simulation, rather than as subjects. I’ve never been this attentive of them, and thus have grown fond witnessing the evolution of their shrewdness as it arises. Where once I saw insolence, now I see a will to live and engage in My earthly blessings in spite of any turbulence. My angels who take pleasure in a craft surely understand how these feelings compete.
Yet, I am now compelled to intervene. I have not yet detailed the domestic, yet within such it seems we are witnessing the resurgence of a shared language. The children of this era, even with language-scrambling in their genetic code, adopt the tongue of their mother, for it seems the application of languages to senses is supplied post-fracture rather than created. It worked with the first generation, for I simply randomized the labels. But with the children, creating a language is a nonsensical act, given I do not wish to instill it in them from birth. The only connector between their tongue and feelings, even where those feelings are vague and different, is that which their mother authoritatively deems them.
The child’s language matches the mothers, yet is a decontextualized strand insofar as that I cannot deem it identical. They seem to understand each other broadly, yet there is some artifice, some disconnect. Perhaps the mothers ought to learn from the Twin dynamic, though their prerequisite time alive makes it a tough check. What I wonder, My angels (and you would know better than I as their guardians) is if they were always such. Is the human species, with every generation, in a telephone game of losing their meaning? I wonder, seeing the polycules and the plantations, if I, in fact, have saved them from the entropy of abstraction where each sheep clings to the sinking ship. Their currency, machines, technology (language amongst which) all distanced them from raw sensation. Now they live solely by it, and can ascribe no objectivity or truth to it. The sense simply is, and that is enough for them.
I’ve also observed a degree of wit among families and lovers, where memory and its coinciding nostalgias have become a point of communication. They travel places, recalling their favourite details of the environment in their own tongue. Knowing the stories, the partners come to understand what the other speaks, even when their words are empty. The perception and vividness with which an immediate object is experienced have given them a limited vocab of synthesized terms.
Say, for example, two friends climbed a tree as a kid and found an owl. Returning to that tree, or coming to some point of shared recollection by reminder, the two are able to pick up on the word the other uses for ‘tree’ and ‘owl’. Simply pointing at the place of remembrance is not enough to convey anything, but the experience made with each other becomes a fulcrum point for translating those closest to you. The most I’ve seen is a shared vocabulary of about 500 terms; all nouns for adjectives come from judgements and verbs/conjunctions cannot be extrapolated from the peculiar differences in sentence structure. Some create tertiary tongues, some learn the others. In a world like this, there’s nothing more intimate than being able to speak even crumbs of another’s tongue. From it, the immaculate feeling that one is home, seen and loved. Oh do I adore how they’ve grown to embrace the immaculate nature of what was once standard.
. . .
My angels, I have decided to intervene, inspired by the persistence of the hereditary mother-tongues and the lover’s synthesis. It will be minor, so fear not, more from intrigue than devaluing the dilemma. I’ve long observed, in many of the humans, a belief in soul-mates. Such a desire has naturally worsened, for almost all individuals long to feel represented in some other. They believe foolishly that they have souls. They do not. Nor do their spirits enter heaven and hell. Such are simply ruses I projected to inspire obedience and moral co-existence, yet such inspired a collateral arrogance. Their loves are predetermined, but I did not design each individual with a set pair. They were not so important to Me. Such happens and is destined to happen, yet I did not fate it so (don’t blame Me for your break-ups, sheep).
Yet now, I want to realize this desire for soul-mates for the sake of science. Knowing there has never been two identical instances of a language in any era leaves me with a hunger. Thus, for half of Earth’s citizens, I will reorient both their tongue and sense perceptions to be perfectly congruous with one member of the other half. Most, if not all, will never meet their partner. They’ll be physically a word apart. Yet, if anyone observes this phenomenon, I seek to know what hopes it might inspire in these dwindling communities. Finding such a person would be a Herculean effort, yet I wish to subtly treat My fellows after I’ve seen the means by which they can adjust.
While here, I’d like also to observe the shape of love amongst those born in this era, for bonds do arise. What seems to be the driving agent for connection is deliverance of pleasure. Those who provide the greatest pleasure, not just in touch, but in any of the five of the senses, become attractions within their communities. Many adopt a pleasurable craft which becomes their vessel of socialization. Domestic relations are often determined by the union of distinct pleasure-making skill-sets under a roof. Similarly, the largest retained communes seem to take the plantation model with a council of artisans at the helm. Yet, for how My sheep aggrandize love, I find it curious it be felt as little more than the pleasure of being nearby another and their aesthetic creations. Perhaps before, love was found in feeling complete by the words and thoughts of another, but now, with only senses as transmittable expressions, it’s layeredness has been challenged.
. . .
What an exciting day as our first pair comes in contact! They were fortunate to be in the same network of communes, a fortune that occurs a few times the world over. Yet, as much engagement is non-verbal, besides with those they are or wish to be close to, it took the further coincidence of being within earshot while verbalizing before anything occurred. It seems people have also grown to tune out the voices of others, as indiscernible as the chirping of a bird. One began to eavesdrop on the other before approaching them with hesitance. Even as the eavesdropper starts speaking, the other looks uncertain. Part from disbelief, part from uncertainty of meaning, the pair are off to a slow start. Slowly, as they start verifying their verbiage with their immediate surroundings, excitement mounts. Those surrounding them don’t pick up on it, for two similar tongues in such a large pool of babble became banal to thought. They dismiss such to be a blathering argument. To the soul-mates, however, the moment is electric.
All their differences very well could have faded away, for all that mattered was this compromise, this home within the other. This kindredness in the other is what I’ve wished to universally occupy since the start of the experiment. Yet oh, how those pre-fracture demagogue grifters stole meaning from my name! The meaning-makers were a misfire to direct my ire at. Who would’ve thought those that spoke most of me did the most to poison my name.
At long last, these two fellows can be at ease. The love and their bond is instant. Their underlying values shift towards each other at this ability to, at last, discourse, think beyond their perceptions and know outside their subjectivity. The cruel language games of manipulation and falsehoods become a deep-rooted taboo within a bond so precious. The most advantageous outcome was growing towards one another and neither felt any desire but towards that end. Despite being incredibly poor at conversation and what really should and shouldn’t be said, and despite only understanding and speaking on their own experiences, they inspired each other’s use of language. Slowly, they grew to speak on more complex ideas through the rediscovery of doubt.
They assumed points of conflicting experience to be carry-overs from before, perhaps understanding each individual’s language to be closer or farther from every others’. I would never make such a mistake! They were simply unaware that their translations of their direct perceptions might be wrong or challengeable. Doubt was often something inconceivable to entertain, for how can one move outside of their own framework. Yet through collaboration, they moved to seek answers to these little disagreements. When one was first deemed wrong, the other developed a bit of a teacherly complex. Yet, when the second was too, they resisted before waking up the next day laughing, desperate to remain intellectual equals on their own stories. I see from this encounter that authority, at least amidst two bleating sheep, is a risky drug. One feels entitled to the other’s subservience on all affairs in their field of knowledge, even where they might be completely mistaken. Even in deeming themselves equal, they view it not purely so. The heads of their machines took no critique, and such led them to build more machines to govern tongues. It’s pathetic, really, and I take no regret for initiating this to humble their insolence.
Ah, but look now at what I speak. I am authority on all things, for I know and see all that I wish to see. I’ve limited My gaze recently for the sake of building a narrative for this fun little experiment, but I experience all times and places at once. It can be maddening, the superb tedium of witnessing the toil towards that which has been solved trillions of times before and will almost always resolve as if the struggle was never felt. There is no thrill in seeing all ends before matters start. Can indifference make My perspective doubtable, grant Me blindspots in what is best if I decide all impersonally? I ignored Earth for so long, deciding their lives and movements unsophisticated. I see now how, even in focusing my gaze, there are some things that couldn’t possibly follow from my material makings. I see now how I focus on them and no other, how desperate I am for stories amidst My boredom. I must wonder if boredom determines my perspective and if the paltry finitude of My subjects makes them, to a degree, intangible. Doth lack of limitation make Me incomplete? It sounds absurd, yet I must wonder why such insolence was inspired in My contrivances. Why do they still pine for other lords than I? Is it for how their tongues misconstrued Me or is it that one as infinite as I is unrelatable in their limited perceptive capacity? Given what I see now, I must lean towards the latter, though I suppose two things can be true at once.
. . .
Few more pairs have been made, but what fascinates Me more is how others have begun to understand such pairings as a possibility. Some approach the pairs and excitedly try to speak, finding nothing has changed. Some view the pairs with deep envy, for which one pair-member was even killed (a move which drove the other to a grief-induced suicide promptly after). When hope is actualized, it seems returning to the lack of it is more devastating than never having realized one’s hope at all.
The most interesting of these inspired movements, Angels, is the swell of nomads and explorers. I’ve missed sheep like these: navigators, bearing witness to My talent for genre as they traverse and learn different ecosystems. Civilization and technology made them so keen to keep moving between the same few spots. Here, I witness a conflict between My infinitude and their finitude. I know the quests of these nomads is as absurd as the difference between standing still and running in trying to dodge the rain. I’ve seen nomads move out of their civilizations to cut through unpopulated jungles in their search. I’ve seen nomads try to cross the sea alone. I cannot comprehend what motivates them, yet their passion and romanticism in pursuit of a land where one shares their voice seems all the fuel they need.
From witnessing these stories play out, I must question the power of the distinctly human concept of having hope. Hope, for many of them, is their greatest driver. For some, resigning from their hope seems the only rational way forward. It blinds them to the boons of all futures but one (and there is only one future for them, in which most of their hopes are never fulfilled). This temporally-bound perspective where one holds so much faith in the future that it moves them to actualize it is something ludicrous and admirable from My divine view of things that I can’t help but question whether I am suited to lead them at all. Hope-making, faith that tomorrow will come as better than today, seems all the God and purpose they need. They didn’t need My loving hands cradling them again, as I’ve been trying to do, they just needed a means of seeing the way forward for life to truly feel like a blessing again. Rotten creatures, so many of them undoubtedly are for how they organize their spaces to deny hope and freedom. Yet amidst those who are able to create hope and write brighter futures, I see nothing but a desperate want to love Me when all seems to deny My existence in their eyes.
I am enamoured by those that find peace through sinless hopes, who can realize their hope without stomping on heads out of selfish urgency. Hope requires no language except to unify. It requires no logic except a real hunger for things being better. It requires no enemy except spite for the limits of its era. If My humans are anything beneath the certainty of language and sense, they are dreamers who will do anything to reconcile their hopes. All it takes is a spark and a bit of imagination for willpower unto self-sacrifice to calm their fear and despair, their longings for comfort and convenience. I wonder now: do I intervene? Give them reasons to hope so that again they can appreciate My domain? Or, in this affair, does only the human have the mastery over themselves to manifest such a will? Perhaps it’s best I leave them fractured with a soul-mate somewhere. Let Me stand by and see how this challenge spurs them on. I’ll keep watching from afar and, to thee insolent meaning-makers, I hope you’re glad I’m granting you your way.