The Groove Issue 27 - How to Deal With Our Very Own Tower of Babel
Welcome to the 27th issue of The Groove.
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HOW TO DEAL WITH OUR VERY OWN TOWER OF BABEL
Our Confounded Speech
Do you feel that people have lost their ability to communicate with nuance? Or given up their willingness to hear (much less accept) someone else’s point of view? Maybe you have felt radical at times. I know I have.
But in the past year, with more time in my hands than I’ve ever had in my life, I’ve arrived at the conclusion that it’s hard to come up with great ideas of value to society if one always sticks to one side of the story. At the end of the day, deep down we know there are always two of them.
Remember the biblical story of the Tower of Babel? The Book of Genesis tells us about a united human race that speaks a single language and agrees to build a city and a tower tall enough to reach heaven so they can “make a name for themselves.” God, observing their city and tower, and knowing of the pride inside the people wanting to be above him, confounds their speech so that they can no longer understand each other, and scatters them around the world. Folks end up dispersed everywhere without tower, city, or community.
Two of the most recognizable and iconic renditions of the Tower of Babel were painted by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance, around 1563. Bruegel based the architecture of his paintings on the Roman Colosseum, an empire destroyed in part by its leaders’ inability to see the people’s needs and by the internal fights of power within. Their motto was “divide and conquer,” and little did they know that same saying would be their downfall.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The (Great) Tower of Babel, oil on wood panel, c. 1563. This painting belongs to the permanent collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Our Views Are Shaped by Algorithms
Since the advent of the internet and the amplification of voices through social media, I feel that we’ve been living in the Tower of Babel for way too long. We don’t need to speak different languages to disagree with our own neighbor, we have simply lost the ability to understand each other.
This is a dangerous slippery slope conducive to cancel growth and perspective. I can’t even fathom how to generate creative work, whether it’s art, a product, or a marketing campaign, without having abundant perspective.
Algorithms give us the information and perspectives we want fed to us, we hang out with people we agree with and unfollow those who don’t. Can we aim for disruption, creativity, and innovation if all we can hear is the echo of our own voices?
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The (Little) Tower of Babel, oil on wood panel, c. 1563. This is the second rendition of the same subject that we know of and it belongs to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam.
To Champion Diversity One Must Accept Others’ Opinions
Note that I don’t say: “Don’t take a stand” or “Don’t have an opinion” - that’s what a radical would think when reading this article. I’m instead advocating for the possibility that there’s room for other people’s point of view and – gasp!- they may even be enlightening.
Earlier this month, Alan Jacobs, a distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University, published an article in The Hedgehog Review where he argues that people who are either upset because of the “Cancel Culture” or those who fiercely defend it usually are as self-righteous and blinded by their own opinions as those whose point of view they can’t stand.
For all the great push about diversity that corporate America is supposedly trying to champion, there should also be an acknowledgement that people have diverse points of view, and as long as that point of view doesn’t lead to harm, harassment or criminal activity, people should be allowed to safely bring their ideas to the table.
More than 2,500 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War:
"There are not more than five musical notes, yet the combinations of these five give rise to more melodies than can ever be heard. There are not more than five primary colors, yet in combination they produce more hues than can ever been seen.”
It’s in the combination of perspectives where creativity flourishes.
Brazilian conceptual artist, Cildo Meireles, created a 2001 version of the infamous tower which is part of the permanent collection of the Tate Modern in London. It was built using 800 radios from the 1920s to 2000, each one tuned to a different channel and set at the minimum volume to which it is audible.
Extend An Invitation and Avoid Having An Agenda
How do we get out of our Tower of Babel alive? How do we keep progressing by intentionally widening our horizons?
Some of the wisest artists that I’ve met in my life agree on something: they create art because they want to extend an invitation to the audience to enter their worlds, not because they want to impose an agenda, come off as preachy or point fingers to anyone. I have thought about this quite often.
I think the key takeaways for me are the words “invitation” and “not having an agenda.” Maybe you have felt prey to someone who not only wants to convince you that they are right but also wants you to side with them. So many friends have told me that they feel like they are walking on eggshells at work and in social situations where they are afraid of saying anything. Nothing good can come out of this type of censorship.
Du Zhenjun, considered one of the pioneering digital artists in China, is known for his interactive new-media installations and digitally manipulated photographs. He created an entire series after the Tower of Babel (2010), comprised of minutely detailed composite photographs featuring scenes of pollution, destruction, violence, and political unrest.
Look for Creative Friction
In 2013, a group of professors from the University of Illinois and Ohio State University conducted several experiments with 186 people. They asked them to identify their political preferences, then split the participants in duos of diametrically opposite views. The objective was to elaborate an argument that backed up each person’s ideas.
The findings of the study suggest that the more diverse in opinion the group is, the harder each one works to back up their arguments and the more creative and robust solutions to problems come up. Diversity jolts us into cognitive action in ways that homogeneity simply does not.
How we bridge this divide is individual and personal work. You can invite people to your world, but there’s no need to win, convince, have the others side with you. There should be no agenda behind it.
Getting out of your comfort zone in the newspapers or websites that you read or looking for what the other side publishes is a good way to expand your worldview.
Creative friction between ideas is a good thing. Healthy debates take longer, but you have the reward of knowing that you aren’t in a room of complacent people who are just validating what you think.
Don’t let the confusion reigning in this Tower of Babel take away your ability to produce your best work, the one that comes from a variety of rich experiences with different people who have thoughts different from yours. You don’t have to agree with them but knowing that they exist, and they could potentially be your customers/collectors/patrons/collaborators will make the path all the more interesting and definitely more creative.
What do you think?
Thank you for reading this far. Looking forward to hearing from you anytime.
PS: There are no affiliate links in this post. Everything that I recommend here is done freely.
THE EXTRA GROOVE
Read:
The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business by Erin Meyer
Bruegel. The Complete Paintings by Jürgen Müller
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
Watch:
The Tower of Babel with British Museum curator Irving Finkel
The Missing Link to Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, a TEDx talk by Maria Morukian
Babel, a film directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu