It’s a foggy morning as I look my window, in my little spot on the Eastern part of these United States. United, we are not. At the moment anyway. I check my usual online news sources to look for signs; cracks in the mainframe of the current hijacked version of the world, which seems now fully untethered from reality.
Nope. Not yet.
Upside-down world continues. I find refuge in the writers I follow on substack and reassurance that, yes, there is an alternative world emerging that insists on a connection to reality, perhaps even one demanding that world is grounded in a desire and search for truth.
The pursuit of truth is its own kind of sustenance. It fuels us. Perhaps we don’t know how important truth is, until we experience its absence.
Some search through scientific reports and data, some through the lens of psychology, some look at history, some via poetry. And while desiring truth, doesn’t make it happen, it’s a good start.
After reading Rudolf Rigger’s A Phallus of Fallacies this morning,
I thought how using language to confuse and distort is fully wicked. Even when we’re shooting for honest discourse between one another, using a shared language, we can and do often miss the mark. Still, it’s an essential tool in the the toolbox of human communication.
I had a friend once who was such an amazing listener - she listened with her full self, with her whole body - that after I spoke she would report back all kinds of things she heard that I was unaware of. It was remarkable. Through her example I learned about the power of listening deeply; beyond the mere words spoken, to get at a deeper kind of meaning.
Not surprisingly then, we did have the sorts of conversation that allowed for new insights. Satisfying conversation where your body felt met in a way it hadn’t before. That kind of communication doesn’t stop at words or language - they are just one of the tools used. We communicate through our whole being and when the desire to understand is present, then words are just the starting point.
That’s possible among people with the right amount of intention, discipline and skill.
When however the desire is not to clarify meaning, but to intentionally distort it, well we’re in upside down world and our usual tools for communication and understanding - even basic ones like language - are being used against us. Weaponized to keep us, not just misinformed, but also confused and perhaps over time, despondent to the point of giving up: “Oh, who knows what’s really going on? Everything we hear is a lie or partial truth designed to mislead us. What’s the point?” I’ve heard myself say this.
It’s sort of like a current version of the Tower of Babel story. In that biblical tale the tower is built by the people as a sign of their greatness. Perceived as arrogant and rebellious, the story goes, God decides to make everyone speak different languages so they are in a state of confusion and unable to communicate together, thereby halting the building. This also makes them disperse across the land.
(I am as far away from a biblical expert as you can get, so I’m just using this as a metaphor, not weighing in on interpretation.)
Today, the Tower of Babel story is resurrected. We don’t need God to create many languages in this redux, we can just distort the one we share enough so that we might as well be speaking different languages. The intention and result is the same: create confusion as words become as meaningful as babel.
What’s my point? I suppose I want to encourage all the truth-seekers and truth-speakers out there. Words are not the end-all in communication. The desire and intention to get at and share true information is present even when language has been hijacked. When we listen with a genuine desire to understand - then words aside - we get it.
It’s in the field, that morphic space we all share. As we penetrate those fields, insights and understanding will come. (Rupert Sheldrake and David Bohm come to mind.)
So to those attempting to ground the new emerging world in truth, your efforts are not for nothing - they do not get dispersed upon the land of no-sense. They carry the seeds of that intention, that will germinate over time and create the sustenance that only a pursuit of truth can provide.
Foggy morning here, but I expect it will lift soon.
well written and communicated post. I am sort of a bible scholar,l with graduate degree and post grad almost finished, but will never be. the tower of babel also makes not much sense to me, fail to see any logic. maybe just a story.
we do live in the upside down world.
I heard a podcast recently that drew a solid parallel of the Tower of Babel and our current affairs. It was about our desire to reach the kingdom of heaven. I think it expands on some of what you’re saying in your post: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=okO4H_Y6704
It features some of my favorite writers/thinkers.