I bring up the The Tower of Babel here because it is an apt metaphor for the loss of communication which emerges as societies become more advanced.
The loss of communication is, in my opinion, the most urgent problem humanity faces today. At this point in the analysis, I can only say, there is no reason to cast skepticism on a myth for being a myth by itself. Especially with a myth as banal as the Tower of Babel. How could one even try to refute it?
It makes no mention of a specific place, specific person, specific time, or anything. Building the tallest possible structure could well be the biblical version of “Let’s build a bar.”
They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
What does this say about the act of constructing tall buildings back in ancient times?
They did it for entertainment. They wasted precious time and resources on massive entertainment projects so that their city might attract a large crowd. They built these towers so they could be seen and be named, like a Hollywood star.
The Tower of Babel is a warning. In my belief, it is a compelling warning. It is a warning about how tall structures without purpose are symbols of disconnection from reality and how this disconnect not necessarily causes, but attracts, the loss of communication. The tower is a measuring tool. One cannot build the tallest tower in the world unless they have nothing better to do. With every floor that the tower accumulates the people building it disconnect themselves in a literal and metaphorical sense. After all, this is what the spectacle does. It makes the metaphorical literal. Once the tower has soared above its point of use value, it holds only entertainment value. Once the tower has soared above the point of entertainment value, it stops growing altogether.
The loss of communication is hardly a new problem in philosophy. It’s been brought to the forefront by thinkers like Wittgenstein, Derrida, Baudrillard and the post-structuralists. One might even consider the post-structuralists as the destroyers of meaning who uncoupled Saussere’s signifier and signified, destroying not only communication but language itself.
This loss of communication is in some ways unavoidable. While the bible would like to portray this as the appropriate punishment for an arrogant and sinful people, this is not the case. A loss of communication is a natural and even predictable phenomenon.
According to DeBord, the loss of communication is due to the rise in isolation because, as he brilliantly notes, isolation is the product of technology. DeBord points to cars and television as key examples to prove his observation and this phenomenon has only progressed since the time of his writing. Television has become Netflix so you don’t even have to watch things at the same time as everyone else anymore. Music went from concerts to records to walkmen to iPhones and airpods. We use airpods to ignore even the sensation of other’s people sounds in public, while also taking control of what we get to hear.
DeBord writes: “Separated from his product, man himself produces all the details of his world with ever increasing power, and thus finds himself ever more separated from his world. The more his life is now his product, the more he is separated from his life.”
We have been separated from our lives. Real life happens on the ground. What happens on the 122nd floor is fake, it is spectacle, and it is unpleasant.
Being on the 122nd floor fills us with anxiety and boredom. Not only are we aware of 122 iterations of what’s already been done, but the competition for wall space is outrageous. At this point, we are so familiar with the structure, it’s as though every artist merely competes to replace instead of competing to place. This is to say that the layout of the wall has already been decided. Artists do not add their art to an evolving tapestry, but fill a niche dictated to them by history. If one ends up on the wall, they are imposters. If one gets no wall space at all, they are failures.
It’s not as if the anxiety we feel up here on the 122nd floor is unwarranted. 122 floors up is a dangerous place to be. We will be first floor to fall, if it collapses. We will be the last floor new visitors find, if it is abandoned.
How much higher would we want to build this, even if we could do so safely? Are we entertained or are we bored, even now on floor 122? Does this competition, anxiety, and scarcity make us feel good?
No.
anti-Art today which is the mask of advertising, propaganda, and complacency allows itself to be noise. It creates an artistic landscape where the only true artist is one who allows themselves to be ignored. The only true artist would be someone who creates art and destroys it. This artist is a denier of the wall whose craft is unknown. This is what the hyper-competitive world has made of our art.
This would seem to indicate that the only art that can exist must have no audience, otherwise that art would be a product of competition, but this makes no sense. Some critics would argue that art only begins when the audience has the chance to interpret it, yet a theory of anti-Art could very easily conclude that art must have no audience at all.
So, if we know this isn’t true, where have we gone wrong? anti-Art must obviously be a new phenomenon but where did it begin?
My next section will begin to address the question of how it began, but why I brought up the Tower of Babel most of all is because it will let us know how it ends.
The Tower of Babel is not about the origin of languages or how tall things succumb to gravity. It’s about entertainment and how objects of attracion eventually become objects of repulsion. It was not god that scattered the people across the earth, it was boredom. Everyone got bored of the really tall tower and they left the tourist trap that was Babel until the only people who remained were those who had bought into the message that the tower was needed to unite humanity. This obnoxious embrace of spectacle, which has a modern counterpart in Marvel films, is likely the driving force pushing people out of the city. It’s not enough to be entertained by the tower, one must also love the tower. If one loves the tower, they must not say anything bad about the tower. If one wants to say something bad about the tower they ought to leave Babel so the people who do love it can love it without distraction.
The tower as the attractor demands loyalty because without the tower nothing will ever unite this many people ever again. A belief emerges that unity through entertainment can solve all the problems in the world, but this unity does not solve problems, it hides problems. What is true and what the spectacle wants to be true uncouples and diverges with neither tolerating dissent. This uncoupling, like the uncoupling of the signifier and the signified and the uncoupling of art and entertainment (which will be discussed in section 4), is the chasm from which new languages emerge.
When a spectacle becomes too strong and too disconnected from reality, like the Tower of Babel, then the state of boredom is an act of heresy and skepticism and it is the mark of a non-believer.
So even though the tower eventually fell and we all know this is how the story inevitably ends, a strict reading of the biblical text does not include the tower’s fall. It does not describe the people as arrogant and wanting to kill god or even the desire to build the tower to actually reach the heavens. This is all conjecture. It’s been added like floors to the Tower of Babel that is the religions of today. All the Bible claims directly is that people built a large tower for the purpose of fame and attention, then everyone got bored and it was abandoned.
This is perhaps the most depressing and tragic feature of the Tower of Babel. It is a product of the spectacle, but it ends with no such grand finale. This is the fate of all spectacles. So long as spectacles preserve power, the spectacle of its own destruction can never be allowed to happen, and yet when it inevitably comes, there will probably be a sigh of relief that this spectacle which once commanded our attention like a tyrant of the vibes had finally disappeared.
This is how the spectacle will end. Now, how did the spectacle of today begin?