INTRODUCTION
Now the whole earth had one language and few words.
And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the
land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another,
"Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they
had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said,
"Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the
heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered
abroad upon the face of the earth." And the lord came down to
see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built.
And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they all have one
language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing
that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come,
let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not
understand one another's speech." So the Lord scattered them
abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off
building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because
the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the
Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth. (Genesis
11:1-9)
I first became acquainted with this Biblical passage while doing
research for this paper. It was referred to in a book by Pinker
(1994). While I am aware that the classical interpretation of
this story is that of hubris, arrogant pride resulting in loss or punishment
(the people "arrogantly" believed they could build a tower to heaven
and were punished by being scattered over the face of the earth), it
spoke differently to me. Because of the topic I'm writing about,
perhaps it took on a different meaning.
The parts of the story that intrigued me were; "Now the whole
earth had one language and few words," ". . . a tower with its top in
the heavens," and, ". . .this is only the beginning of what they will
do; and nothing they propose to do will now be impossible for them.
Come let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they
may not understand one another's speech." My interpretation is:
It was because the people spoke one language with only few
words that they were able to understand each other and thus achieve
impossible tasks such as reaching the heavens. Likewise, it is
because the human race speaks so many different languages and cannot
understand one another that there is war, poverty, disease and the potential
destruction of the planet.
The passage says, "the whole earth had one language and few words."
Few words implies to me that perhaps there may be a deeper
form of communication that is not as evident as the spoken word.
Once the human race can learn to tap into this deeper form of communication,
it will become easier for us to understand one another and accomplish
"impossible" feats such as heal the planet and live in peace, disease
free, within a "heaven on earth."
During the course of this paper, I will give evidence for a deeper
form of communication and introduce the disease process. I will
then take the reader on a journey through the evolution of humanity
and language to show how our spoken language and the development of
certain technologies, specifically the written word and print technologies,
can distract from deeper communication and create a mind-body split
aiding in the disease process. The further development of these
technologies will be followed and we shall see how they can be used
to heal the mind-body split and aid in the creation of a "heaven on
earth." What I mean by heaven on earth will be addressed
in a later section of this paper.
The majority of this paper is about healing splits between the
mind and the body and the mindbody and the environment. Before
the conclusion, I'll introduce a spiritual element, thus integrating
mind, body, environment, and spirit. Before I start I'd like
to introduce myself. This will give the reader an idea of how
my idea process developed and why this topic is important to me.
REFERENCES
- Pinkler, S.
(1994). The language instinct: How the mind creates language.
New York, NY: Milliam Morrow and Company.
- (1982).
The holy bible: Revised standard version. Nashville,
TN: Holman.
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