A spiraling Tower of Babel
One thing that I think is really cool about the numbers ‘3’ ‘4’ and ‘5’ is how when going from ‘3’ to ‘4’ or ‘4’ to ‘5’, there is a completely new structure that we couldn’t have understood within the world of the smaller number. For example, the number three is found in basic atomic structure –Elecron, Proton and Neutron. When these three types of particles are organized and combined into actual elements, we go beyond a trinity and into the building blocks of our universe. ‘4’ comes in here in the symbolism of the four basic elements Earth, wind, fire and water. Science might have taught us that these aren’t the actual atomic elements, but we use them as symbolic place holders for the actual elements; the fact that someone somewhere chose to only have four basic elements is further evidence that ‘4’ is anchored in ideas of building blocks and raw material.
Next I want to talk about the Tower of Babel story from the bible cause I think it is super relevant to our class. The basics of the story are pretty common knowledge I think: humankind decided to build a tower to heaven, God saw it and decided to stop it by making them all speak different languages. Looking at the actual story, however, reveals a pretty strong (and I think true) metaphor. The story takes place right after Noah’s ark. Noah and his family are the only people left on earth and so logically, after hundreds (thousands?) of years, there is a single massive civilization of humans who all share the same culture and language. A leader among them, named “Nimrod” comes out and says something along the lines of ‘Come let us make bricks and build a tower to the heavens.’ everyone agrees and they begin building this tower. Then God up on his celestial throne says ‘I have to stop them’ and depending on the translation, either “they will become like us” or “they will be able to do whatever they want.” He then proceeds to strike them down, babbel their languages and drive them apart, end of story. What is so interesting to me is how as a species, we are moving towards understanding each other’s cultures and teaching each other our own customs. What is the product of this equality? Space travel, mapping the human genome, the internet… you name it. It’s because we are working together as a species that we are becoming more and more efficient at making our imagination a reality, doing anything we want.
The metaphor of the tower is so cool because it reflects the numeric themes we have been talking about. Nimrod talks about making bricks –geometrically ‘4’– ino rder to build a tower to the heavens… and a tower, like the one in the image I posted, seen from above is a spiral. Spirals are related to ‘5’ the golden ratio and stars. Human beings are ‘5’ as well 2 arms 2 legs and a head, life, regeneration, etc… The story of the Tower to me is like a 6 because it is the natural five of the human species, alongside the artificial five of the Tower (artificial because it was created by us) and their ingenious combination results in something beyond individualistic humanity, a collective human god or deity able to ‘do whatever they want’. This I think might be what I want to bring to our crowdsourcing class, this idea of our movie pointing to that next, incomprehensible phase.
Interesting you bring in the "6" (hexad) aspect because six represents structure, function, order. So you have people building this structure as if they were part of a hive, and they all have hive mind, because they "speak the same language." There's also a bit of 2 (the dyad) in your analogy. Universal Language - Babel - Universal Language - Babel(? That remains to be seen)
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