Postmodern Fable 2

Biblical Prolog (Genesis 11:1-4)

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 whole earth."

Main Story

Gorgias George was a Sophist of no mean pedigree. It was his dream to rebuild the world as an open society, uniting all peoples in one big happy family of humankind, and he was prepared to open his bank account to accomplish the task. His bank account boasted billions of dollars in gold bricks, and, if necessary, he would tap into that cache of bricks to build his dream house.

Needless to say, his scheme attracted countless goldbrickers, who liked both the big, shiny pile of gold and the dream house idea. They had no idea what he meant by an open society, but if he was planning on leaving the door open, they were ready to walk right in, lock, stock and barrel.

Obviously, the bigger the house, the better. So if Gorgias George had plans to build a house to house all of humanity, that was fine with them.

Unfortunately, as old GG began to build his house, he soon figured out that he would run out of bricks before he was done. So he got the bright idea to get more bricks. Not everyone, however, was entirely pleased with his new lust for bricks, and they insisted on keeping their own. GG, however, would not take no for an answer.

So he looked around for the biggest army he could buy. Since he was already low on gold bricks, however he realized he couldn't afford to buy one as big as 20 million strong, so he settled for one that was relatively new and inexperienced, and not quite so big.

The problem was they were not yet on sale. He didn't want to wait for the holiday season, when everything goes on sale, however. He was getting impatient. So, instead of buying the army outright, he decided to buy the owner, which actually turned out to be pretty convenient, because the owner had tons of hangers-on (lots of whom were goldbrickers from way-back when) from all walks of life.

Smart move, Gorgias.

It turns out the owner was really low on cash (mostly because he'd spent a lot of it on get-rich schemes in the past), so Gorgias got what he wanted for a steal. Besides, it turns out all those goldbrickers were ready to cooperate with him in the deal, and they went about from house to house pursuading the owners what a great guy GG was, and how wonderful his big open dream house was going to be.

Then, GG got the great idea to spread the rumor that his name wasn't actually Gorgias George, but, simply Great Guy.

All of that helped GG put together a leveraged buyout offer that the army owners couldn't refuse.

So GG got his army, and still kept most of his bricks. What to do, next?

GG needed to find cheap labor to build his dream house.

That's when he got the brilliant idea to make sure there would be millions of people out of work and ready to take anything to keep body and soul together. He began slowly, with putting the screws to small businesses, fastening them down so they couldn't move (with the screws, that is). This led to millions of layoffs. There was a danger of unrest, so GG made sure they got big fat unemployment checks, food stamps, the promise of free medical care, etc., etc., etc.

GG couldn't actually afford all that, of course, but he didn't have to keep them on the line all that long, either. All he had to do was make them fat, dumb and happy for a while, thinking that they were set. Then, as more and more of them became desperate for their next meal, he could recruit them to his project on the cheap.

GG also got the bright idea to buy the world's sheep herders (people you may know as pastors). They were all hurting for contributions, so lots of them were easy to by off. GG called a big meeting to discuss his idea.

"Where in scripture does it talk about God building a big house, big enough for everybody?" he asked.

After discussing things for a while, one of them piped up, "That would be John, chapter 14, and Revelation, chapter 21. The problem is, they're not houses, exactly, and they're not exactly even the same idea."

"You mean God actually wants to buid two houses?" He asked, incredulously.

"Well, actually, no. One is already built. That's his house. The other isn't really a house. It's a walled city. That one has yet to be built. But that's probably only a literal interpretation. The real meaning in both scriptures is probably a bit more subtle than that. You know, like a metaphor. Probably God's house is heaven, and maybe the walled city is a new universe. To be honest, we don't really know for sure what it is."

"G'wan. You guys are always trying to make things complicated, even contradicting each others' interpretations, probably figuring that's the best way to keep people hooked. If you all agreed with each other and the explanations were simple, people would lose interest."

"Actually, GG. No matter what we do, people lose interest. But that's another story. The point is, God is subtle. Just when you figure you have him boxed into a nice neat box, or house or walled city, he shows you it isn't big enough for him."

"Look. You guys get together and write this stuff down. Discuss it between you if you must, but I want a written report in the morning."

"You got it, GG."

So GG got up the next morning and invited his top advisors in to discuss the write-up. These top advisors are people you and I would call ad-men, tale-spinners, and all sorts of other names. The point is they had a way with words.

"So what do you all think?" he asked them.

"This ain't gonna sell, GG. We need a new angle. We think we got it, though."

"So, what is it?" He asked.

"We think all you gotta do is go through the text, and replace every occurrence of the word "metaphors" with the word "mega-floors." That has the advantage that people will go back to thinking in concrete terms (and, then, of course, my brother can sell a lot of concrete, he thought to himself), and get their minds off this spiritual crap.

"Brilliant!" said GG. "Let's do it!"

And so the new Gospel was written, along with its concrete interpretation.

And the first congregations that got on board with the idea were already members of big megachurches, where services were held in big warehouse-sized stadiums. These folks were already used to worshipping in places with lots of concrete, and steel girders, too. The sheepherders invited in all the top preachers to sell the idea.

Unfortunately for GG's dream, however, not everybody was on board with the project.

Some of those people were familiar with the scriptures that the new Gospel cited, and they questioned the interpretation.

Some of those people were architects who had real world experience building big buildings and other grand projects, and they knew from bitter experience that GG's math didn't add up.

Some of those people were financial gurus, who had real world experience with financing big projects, and they knew from bitter experience that GG's math didn't add up.

Some of those people were social science weenies who had been involved in big Shangri-La projects before, and they knew from bitter experience that GG's math didn't add up.

Some of those people were engineers who knew in their gut that any project that size was bound to have some serious loose ends, especially the ones who had been involved in big projects with lots of loose ends, and they knew GG's system wouldn't scale up.

Some of those people were mathematicians, who just knew GG's math was screwy. They tried warning the people that the math was screwy.

Unfortunately, people in general hate math, and they didn't want to hear anything about math.

People across the pond were even more adamant. Not only did they hate math. They even hated maths, especially polymaths.

They all wanted things to be really simple. As simple as possible. In fact, even simpler. Much simpler.

So position papers started popping up all over the Internet. Some talked about interest payments. Some talked about bond ratings. Some talked about investment efficiency problems. Some talked about market distortions, especially stuff like "moral hazard" and "shortages" and "black holes" and "long pole in the tent," etc., etc. Some even warned of discontent and violence within the project.

GG, of course, knew the risks. He'd seen it all before. He already had his escape route planned. So if his big project failed, that was actually o.k. by him. He knew where his secret stash was. He knew where to hide when things got rough. He knew that when the killing finally stopped, he could come out and be a bigger boss, relatively speaking, than ever. Better than that. He could become king.

But, then, a funny thing happened on the way to the big dream of an open society, living in a big dream house.

Biblical Epilog (Genesis 11:5-9)

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 have all 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 there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.

Postscript and disclaimer:

First, the postscript.

There are, of course, tons of people who believe a literal interpretation of Genesis 11. I don't happen to be one of them. It is, however, in my humble estimation, a powerful story of the futility of projects born of human pride, a type of pride that lends itself to what we might call "vertical overreach."

One rather trivial example of what I'm calling "vertical overreach," but which is nevertheless strikingly emblematic, is the decision to develop and use what some people have called a reusable space vehicle, and what others have called a space shuttle, but which engineers who know the details of the project realize is highly premature from a practical perspective. At the time the space shuttle project came on line, humanity was actually decades away from developing the core technologies that would have made the project practical. But people are impatient, especially plutocrats.

We're not talking specifically here about American hubris. There's nothing particularly unusual about American hubris. What we're talking about here is human hubris. Every culture in the world has its examples, from taller sky scrapers to more massive hydroelectric projects to green economies to corporate giants to the next huge sports complex to government managing huge sectors it has no business managing to yet another bureaucrat's idea of Shangri-La, Utopia or My Secret Garden/Sexual Eden. They all have one thing in common, to wit, some plutocrat gets his (or, in some cases, her) rocks off, and money that might have been profitably employed in useful ventures gets wasted. The bigger the ego, the bigger the project. The bigger the project, the greater the waste. The greater the waste, the greater the damage to the future.

The story of the Tower of Babel is not so much about building (or even buying) a stairway to heaven. It's about a pelvic thrust into heaven. It's about mankind trying to prove to God that he's been wrong all along, and that if he (God) only had imagination, humanity could solve all of its problems.

The biblical postscript to the story is not about God deliberately messing up humanity's plans. It's about the natural collapse of those plans and the inevitable consequences of collapse. Most important of all, it's about God saying to humanity, "It's your mess. You clean it up."

Now the disclaimer.

It would be natural to assume that "Gorgias George" is a stand-in for George Soros, but, actually, it's really quite the other way around. The name "Gorgias" refers to one of the earliest Greek sophists. The sophists were teachers in Ancient Greece who attracted paying customers. In some ways, Aristotle was the quintessential sophist, in that sense. His customer was Philip II of Macedon, and his pupil was Alexander the Great. Unlike most sophists, however, Aristotle had enough personal integrity not to warp his art in pursuit of the almighty drachma.

Gorgeous George was, in his day, the Fabio of "professional wrestling." As everyone knows who follows (or has followed) professional sports, the expression "professional wrestling" is a misnomer. What it actually is is soap opera on canvas.

The hybrid name, Gorgias George, then, is about soap opera on the world stage. It's about the grand social and economic experiment that's supposed to solve all the world's problems. It's about convincing all the world's rich and powerful that the scheme will work. It's about playing to the crowds. It's about recruiting useful idiots in all walks of life.

It's about sucking up all the world's resources in the process. And, finally, it's about, in practical terms, the inevitable failure of the project.

Soros, for his part, just happens to be emblematic of the problem. By himself, he isn't the problem. As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

The biblical epilog portrayed a dark age. We, because of our stupidity and waste, are about to enter a dark age of biblical proportions.