the Tower of Signals

Thousands of years ago, we built a legendary tower, the shadow of which has seemed to darken our human history even unto today.

According to a certain well-known historical source, the Bible . . . the tower of Babel was erected in some location east of the Euphrates River. The region therein has been known since that ancient time by various names:  Chaldea, Shinar, Babylon, and a few other identities, such as the current one, Iraq.

So an ancient tale about the tower of Babel, especially its fall, has been passed down to us through the ages.   The biblical account says that The Tower of Babel’s undoing happened because the people were unable to communicate. So they were not able to get the thing built.

In our modern reflection upon that archaic project, I think what Will Rogers or Mark Twain or Yogi Berra, or some such sage  said, applies:

“What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

It’s an old story, but true.

Nevertheless, I’m here to tell ya that in spite of ourselves we people of the earth have managed to erect some pretty impressive towers here and there throughout the ages.

For instance, notice this  classic religious tower in San Francisco, which happens to be a double.

This structure represents that spirit of religion that dominated our Western culture for a couple of thousand years.

Here’s a Spanish project representing a more contemporary creative impulse toward the divine.

Very impressive. But the era of God-inspired basilica-building has been overtaken by more humanistic projects. Since the so-called Enlightenment in the 18th-century, people have aspired to ideals even loftier than mere religion. This modern emphasis has wrought even higher and higher feats of skyscraping.

The long epoch of God-inspired tower-building has been overtaken by a New Age of Man.

And yet, our rising human spirit has morphed itself beyond mere commercial, citified projections. Check out an Olympic objet d’art that the Barcelonans fashioned for the 1992 Olympics:

This fluidic rising structure embodies a humanic zeitgeist; it aspires to inspire ascension to world peace—a peace wrought through zealous sports competition instead of bloody wars fought with destructive weapons on muddy battlefields.

Pretty damned impresseve, huh?!

Higher and higher we strive; higher and higher we arrive.

Now in 21st-century AI, We find ourselves in the upper regions of human accomplishment.

Physical upbuilding has now taken a back seat to the loftiness of our ideals.

So we’ve built a stupendous net of ideas, an electronic network that ceaselessly transmits gigabytes of presciently important data around the world. It is a web as ethereal as the sun itself . . . as surreal as a Dali . . .  as real as a Warhol.

And towards this end, we’ve built towers of a different—a new and different—kind:

Towers such as this one--structures of ascending human perfectibility-- are slavishly repeating signals all day and all night for the benefit of all mankind!

For the benefit of Mr. Kite, ever and ever onward to greater heights!

We hold these spires to be self-evident—that our updated tower-driven secretions will project a worldwide web of human achievement to rise higher than  the Tower of Babel ever did!

Good luck with that.

Glass Chimera

From Enlightenment to Onlinenment

Well gollee y’all, we have collectively moved from the Age of Enlightenment to the Age of Onlinenment.

Liberty! Equality! Universal Brotherhood!

Two or three centuries ago, us civilized Euro-heritage types began figuring out that we no longer needed  the ole Roman church to tell us how to be good and not be bad. We used our enlightened minds to think our way past their ancient religiosity and priestly hoodoo shenanigans; we began to view life in a more Romantic way. We began to  understand that each one of us—each individual—could determine his/her own destiny. We determined that we didn’t need those old priestly neutered fuddy-duds any more to tell us what was right or wrong.

After a while we took our rejection of ancient institutions to the next level. By the time the 20th century rolled in, we had figured out we really didn’t need them uppity kings and queens no more; we ran most of them out of town; we even chopped a few of their royal heads. We were having a grand time making mincemeat of millenia-old royal houses, kings, queens, dukes, duchesses, earls and heiresses. Who needs counts and countesses, marquises and marquesses?

By mid-20th-century, we had honed in in on the regular politicos and company men, identifying them as superfluous self-serving dead weight dragging the system down. Useless people, the whole lot of ‘em. Throw the bums out, somebody said. Who needs fat cat prime ministers, prejudicial presidents, robber barons, pompous politicians,  corrupt corporate lackeys, or fatcat hackeys? Kick ‘em in the ass on the way out the door. By the 21st-century, each one of us had so much control over our personal domains and our very own sope box social media we didn’t even need the old networks any more to tell us what’s important or not important, what’s real cool and what’s the latest hot fake news, who to vote for, who do idolize, imitate or ingratiate or be infatuated with. Not even needed any more was the advice columnist with personal hoodoo howto and who to mock of fock or hook up wit or who to lock up for fibbing to an inquisitional committee.

Our way-cool Enlightenment about the power and wonder of each one of us to be his/her/its own self through the power of the Faceblook ’n the big Tweet and instahoohoogramaton bet-ya-cant-ketchme electrons had brightened the formerly dull dark of obsequious obesity and ancient animosity, rendering it now unto us a wide wide world wild web of such unprecedented intensity that it was lighting up the whole frickin wide web with digital splendor and electronic genius unparalleled and therefore netting such beautiful neutered people heretofore not known in the anals of time!

And so our three-century long trek out of medieval darkness, having morphed us through the illuminati grandiosity of Enlightenment, past obese obsequiosity, into the very ebullient Age of Romanticism, far beyond classical Hour of the Angels Come, so that now we found ourselves busting forth into this new age of electronic awareness necessity and beyond that being hooked up by hook or by crook, turned on, tuned out, dropped out of proprietary propriety and into absolutely cool quasi-obligatory new world neutering Onlinenment.

The Age of Onlinement!

Aren’t you glad you made it here!

I bet you feel smarter already!

Dingding! See Cashier for receipt. Hook up with one of ojr 64oz shugger shug shug while you're in.

Glass Chimera

On Questionable Apples

Long, long ago and far, far removed from this present day and time, it is written
that our ancestress Eve was pondering an apple or something similar
on the infamous tree of knowledge of good and evil.
Whilst she pondered, neither weak nor weary,
o’er forbidden fruit of not-forgotten lore,
suddenly there came a hissing,
as of someone gently kissing,
kissing her cognitive mind
with a curious temptive find.
Her visitor, the serpent, was speaking.
Thereby was her curiosity peaking,
and as her imagination was being fed,
the subtle serpent said
take a bite
it’s all right.
If you do it, your eyes will be opened.
So she did, and they were;
her eyes were opened.
Meanwhile, back at the Eden ranch,
her significant other was wondering,
What’s up with Eve?
Where’s my woman to whom I cleave?
So he ambled over to that mysterious tree
to see
in what circumstance his Eve may be.
And there he found her partaking
and little did they know that history was in their making
when Adam grabbed the thing and took a bite
from that forbidden fruit which expanded their sight
because the serpent had said it would open their eyes,
as Genesis says indeed it did open their eyes,
so now they would know not only good but evil as well
and so from that pivotal tasting 'til now, all hell
breaks loose;
hence all the bad news
from then till now,
and all the trouble that human traffic will allow,
which only goes to show
what maybe you already know:
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

 

Now in this present world we find
a similar situation in our mind.
When’er we partake of world wide web,
by a tree of virtual good and evil are we fed:
implanted with some good talkers and  bad stalkers,
and many types of souls and trolls,
with all stripes of porn and scorn,
even hateful tirades of race
opposed by traces of amazing grace.

So regarding any fruit therein you find
be judicious and take your time.
Don’t partake of anything in haste;
Be careful what you taste!
In the web of evil and good
be careful to partake of what  you  truly should.
 
So this ancient lesson to your mind I bring:
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

King of Soul