The Tower of Babel Rises Again

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

-- Proverbs 16:18

Although human society, generally speaking, has undergone massive cultural, political, scientific and technological changes over the millennia, the structure of the human psyche has remained stable. The moral code of the Judeo-Christian West, honored more in the breach than the observance, is still intact, however occluded. The deadly vices and the cardinal virtues remain in place. The personality types are similar.

The myths, stories, characters and admonitions we read in the Hebrew Bible are as relevant today as they were in the 15th Century BC, in particular the familiar tale of the Tower of Babel. (Genesis 11:1-9.) The story is known to everyone. After the flood, a wandering people found a plain in the land of Shinar where they settled, and said “let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven.” It did not go well for the over-reachers. The Lord came down, as the passage reads, confounded their language, and “scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth.”

The Tower of Babel, a word-play for Babylon, mocks the grandiose plans and brazen presumption of megalomaniac personalities. The Book of Daniel, written thirteen centuries after Genesis, takes up the same theme. King Nebuchadnezzer, who gloried in his regal splendor, built “the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty.” The city that rose on the alluvial plain—in actuality, the plain of Shinar—was meant as a tribute to his authority and grandeur. He was shortly reduced for his self-exaltation to the condition of “the beasts of the field,” until his reason returned to him and he awakened to the folly of his pride. 

What's past is prologue.

The biblical account of human hubris, dismissed as a mere fable, is a warning we have failed to heed. Here the wisdom of the prophet Habbakuk would apply: “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.” (Habbakuk 2:1.) The tower in question is a watchtower, a vantage point from which one detects and renounces the conceit associated with that other Tower.

The point is, of course, that there are mysteries we should not tamper with, that exceed our powers of understanding and control. While extending our reach to acquire knowledge, to plumb the Creation, and to harness nature to our benefit, there are limitations to human pride and impetuosity we would do well to acknowledge. It is a fine line but an irreversible one that should not be crossed. What may be a mortal sin in a theological view of life may be regarded as an unforgiving error in a secular world. 

Man does with dangerous curiosity
These unfathon’d wonders try:
With fancied rules and arbitrary laws
Matter and motion he restrains;
And studies lines and fictious circles draws:
Then with imagin’d sovereignty
Lord of his new hypothesis he reigns.

-- Matthew Prior, On Exodus III

In our present moment, Green technology fetish is a typical example of so transgressive a blunder. A quasi-scientific fiction of how reliable energy can be generated in an environmentally friendly way, it is worse than a mere fantasy. It is an intervention into the forces of nature that leads to the destruction of the environment, the production of noxious substances, the uprooting of economies from their productive base, and the near-impossibility of safe and efficient re-cycling.

Wind turbines rise like micro-installments of the Tower of Babel, promising to exploit the weather in ways that have proven ineffective and, in fact, harmful. They are “technological, financial, and ecological scams,” distorting the landscape, causing hecatombs of avian and insect life, producing prodigious amounts of radioactive waste and neurological hazards like ILFN (Infrasound and Low Frequency Noise). The acoustic signature of wind turbine noise can be profound; moreover, as Australian acoustical engineer Steven  Cooper confirms, the signal pulsations occur across entire frequencies, and are not just limited to the infra-sound region. Indeed, the only windmills worth tilting against are wind turbines. One needs a revitalized and success-oriented Alonso Quixano the Good, aka Don Quixote, to eviscerate a public mirage, Green energy, whose reason for existence is predicated on faulty and deceptive computer models

Wanted: a modern man of la Mancha.

Michael Crichton was right when he urged in State of Fear that we need “more people working in the field, in the actual environment, and fewer people behind computer screens.” Once again, he writes, “the measures being urged have little basis in fact or science. Once again, groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded. Once again, claims of moral superiority are used to justify extreme actions.” Green is a theory without adequate basis in reality. Anthropogenic Global Warming is a prepossession advanced by the extortionate and the ignorant, who divide the “territory” between them.

An equally if not more destructive foray into the structural complexities of the natural environment involves the project to reduce global warming—the most hypothetical of theoretical constructs—by tampering with stratospheric chemistry. Bill Gates, our contemporary Nebuchadnezzer, has advanced a preposterous and dangerous bioengineering plan to spray tons of calcium carbonate (CaCO3) dust into space to dim the sun’s rays.

This is a prelude to disaster, an intervention of the worst kind, and a telling instance of the obtuseness and naiveté of the supposedly super-brilliant. Though generally favorable to Gate’s solar engineering venture, Forbes reminds us that such science comes with unpredictable risks and that a “[m]ajor disruption of global climate could bring unintended consequences”—drought, crop failure and famine. 

In this respect, Gates resembles Obama’s Energy czar John Holdren, who absurdly proposed last-resort interventionist options, such as “shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays”—an atmoforming scheme that would unleash a geoengineered climate debacle. One recalls, too, the loony 1975 IPCC proposal to spread black carbon (soot) across the ice fields to absorb the heat of the sun and so reduce global cooling

Another no less destructive intervention into the complexities of nature, in this case human biology, entails what is euphemistically called “gender confirmation surgery,” especially with regard to young children encouraged to “transition.” Turning males into females and vice versa is considered by many—rightly, I believe—as an abomination, an intrusive manipulation of biologically established sexual identity that will often lead to a lifelong condition of traumatic dysphoria. Some regard this as a violation of a Divine dispensation, others as crime against nature and a psychological travesty. Whatever perspective we may adopt on the issue, the mission to permanently reorder or denormalize the givens of genetic and physiological codes and structures is a form of meddling with the parameters of life that almost inevitably issues in misery and confusion.

Still another infringement of natural law involves the introduction of so-called vaccines to combat the coronavirus infection. As I have written in a previous article for The Pipeline, they are not “vaccines” as we understand them. They are experimental mRNA strands injected into and systematically altering a person’s genetic code, and may severely exacerbate the degree of suffering we are seeing. Global Research makes no bones about this. The mRNA “vaccines” made by Pfizer and Moderna “are a dangerously new exotic creature…that actively hijack[s] your genes and reprograms them.” Dr. Tal Zaks, chief medical officer at Moderna Inc., admits that “We are actually hijacking the software of life.”

Adverse consequences abound: facial paralysis (Bell’s Palsy), blood clotting, anaphylaxis, and even death. According to the National Vaccine Information Center, there have been as of February 26, 2021, 25,212 recorded adverse advents and 1,265 deaths. These are conservative estimates since less than 1% of all vaccine injuries and deaths are reported to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System), a passive, government funded database that relies on voluntary submissions.

It is cold comfort indeed that the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI) has informed clients that “Policyholders should rest assured that nothing has changed in the claims-paying process as a result of Covid-19 vaccinations.” That alone tells us what we need to know. 

We should keep in mind that Covid is a digital virus, constructed from a computer database generating a genomic sequence. The vaccine was not based on “an actual isolated sample of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.” Neither its long- nor short-term safety and effectiveness is assured. Global Research points out that these “vaccines” are really operating systems installed not in computers but in our bodies. Approximately 15 countries to date have suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine. (The AstraZeneca product has not yet been approved for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.) 

Of course it's safe -- why do you ask?

The prognosis is sobering. Once we have reached the inflexion point of re-engineering the sky, scrambling sexual differentiation and re-mapping the genetic code, we will have crossed the line of no return, and the Tower of Hubris we have raised will crumble before us. We will never be the same. As the Bible warns, we will scatter in disarray, we will babble in futile recriminations, victims of an overweening arrogance that has breached the natural limits of our tenure on this planet. 

Will our reason return to us and will we awaken to the folly of our pride, as happened providentially to the Babylonian tyrant? “The pride of thine heart hath deceived thee,” the prophet rebukes the self-important, “thou that dwellest in the clefts of the rock, whose habitation is high; that saith in his heart, Who shall bring me down to the ground? Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set thy nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the LORD.” (Obadiah 1:3). One need not be a believer to take the exhortation to heart.

'The Man Who Tried to Feed the World'

Norman Borlaug was possibly the most significant figure in modern times who remains unknown to the vast majority of people. Unlike others in recent years, he won his Nobel Prize in 1970 for an actual achievement of lasting value, the Green Revolution. He is estimated to have saved on the order of one billion human lives from starvation and malnutrition by massively boosting the crop yields of wheat and other grains through the use of revolutionary scientific agricultural methods.

Even beyond the enormous humanitarian impact of his work, there were important geopolitical implications during the Cold War as well:

The Rockefeller Foundation, working closely with the State Department, understood the potential in Borlaug’s work in Mexico: the Cold War could be won by fighting famine, since ‘no one becomes a Communist on a full belly.’

PBS has released an interesting documentary of his life, The Man Who Tried to Feed the World – subtitled "A Tale of Good Deeds and Unintended Consequences."

In 1966, drought and an exploding population confronted India with the imminent threat of a severe famine that many scientists and intellectuals feared was a harbinger of global catastrophes to come, as the world’s population outstripped its ability to produce food. India turned to Norman Borlaug, an unassuming plant breeder from Iowa whose combination of scientific knowledge and raw determination had made him a legend among a small handful of fellow specialists.

The Man Who Tried to Feed the World recounts the story of the man who would not only solve India’s famine problem, but would go on to lead a “Green Revolution” of worldwide agriculture programs, saving countless lives. He was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work but spent the rest of his life watching his methods and achievements come under increasing fire.

While the film does a very good job of chronicling his magnificent achievements, the minor theme at the end of the film is negative, when it enumerates the “unintended consequences” that Borlaug's revolution created: superfluous peasantry, rapid urbanization, greater demands on resources, and environmental costs. These "costs" are given to be the usage of large quantities of water, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers. What it notably fails to recognize is the ecological catastrophe it prevented:

Humans currently use about one third of the Earth’s land surface area for agriculture—about the same amount used in 1960. If farmers didn’t have the modern tools environmentalists so abhor—improved crop varieties, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides—we would have had to more than double the world’s cropland over the past six decades to produce the same amount of food we do today. Plowing under another third of the Earth’s surface would have been an ecological catastrophe far worse than anything green activists could imagine.

Finally, the film does a poor job of reminding the viewer of the tremendous suffering Borlaug alleviated. There is also an underlying message that his advancements may have made the world worse by enabling easier population growth. Critic Raj Patel goes so far as to imply Borlaug was unworthy of his Nobel Prize for this reason. The ending is less of a celebration of Borlaug’s life than a foreboding. Still, it does not discolor his Green Revolution, which lives on and thrives.