Babel—The Second Round, Part 1

Question: The word “tribe” has a primitive, savage tone, but, at the same time, it speaks about a special connection between people that has been lost in the modern Western world.

No wonder the books of Sebastian Junger, American journalist, author, and filmmaker, who traveled to the most dangerous hot spots of the world, including war-torn Afghanistan and Sarajevo, have become so popular.

Upon his return, he related that the strongest feeling he brought from there was the sense of “tribe” and mutual support. Most of all he was impressed with the peace and confidence that he felt there despite the war and gunfire.

However, once he returned home to New York he began to suffer from fear and post traumatic stress disorder. He understood that while being in the dangerous zone he was experiencing the special feeling of unity that protected him, and when he returned home he became depressed due to the loss of this feeling and the sense of inner emptiness.

What have we humans lost by distancing from the “tribal clan”?

Answer: Humanity came from the womb of nature. We all are the descendants of a single couple that later reproduced again and again. All the couples that came from the first one never left each other. The connection between generations, meaning between parents, children, and grandchildren was preserved. Parents love their children and even their grandchildren more and it strongly binds us together.

We don’t notice it in modern times, but people felt a great closeness to their relatives: uncles, aunts, cousins, and so on. By nature we are created in such a way that we would have continued to live together if not for our egoism that alienated and divided us.

When growing egoism wedges between us, it breaks our natural connections and replaces them with the business relationships: “Go and earn from one another.” Then instead of being connected through the hearts, we seek to connect our pockets in order to earn more.

So we are interested not in the warmth of our relationships, but only in the size of gain or loss in our own primitive, direct, and egoistic benefit.

So it is not surprising that today children don’t feel affection toward their parents, but remember them only to the extent they can use them.

And parents, because of their big egoism and the influence of society also don’t pay much attention to their children; they send them to be educated at school and in various circles. When a child grows up, he is released into life and in the best case, parents talk to him on the phone.

It turns out that we have lost not just the sense of the native tribe, a big family, but also the sense of family in general, even the smallest one. A person comes home from work and there is no one there. He sat alone at work in his office and he is alone at home. He communicates with the world through the screens of the phone, TV, and computer and doesn’t need anybody around him.

We don’t understand how much surrounding ourselves by four cold walls as in an “iron cage” separates us from the native tribal connections, family, human contact, warmth, and engagement. 

It started when our egoism became more important to us than the natural ties between us. It began thousands of years ago in ancient Babylon and spread around the world. People began to lose the feeling of unity and connection.

In ancient Babylon, people lived who understood and felt each other. However, when egoism flared up, it began to divide people into family clans. So many different nations appeared. Egoism began to demonstrate its force of separation. First it separated people into families, and in our time it breaks the bonds even within the family, separating people from each other.

We are now at the second round of the Tower of Babel. In the ancient Babylon, people felt they were trapped inside one city, and today we are locked on Earth. The same phenomena has returned, but now at a global level.
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From KabTVs Program “A New Life” #794 11/29/16