The Tower of Babel
- David Fain
- Jun 1
- 5 min read
May's blog was courtesy of AI. This month's blog is me doing my best to construct a narrative that will interest you. I was having a hard time finding the right approach--until the story of an unexpected phone call gave me the seed I needed: the complexity and challenge of communication.
The 21st century has amplified the frequency and intensity of our encounters. We are inundated with information and misinformation, texting has replaced conversation, emojis have become our convenient shorthand for expressing emotion. What is lost is the nuance, tone, and depth of effective face-to-face conversation, attention, listening skills, and the emotional intelligence to process all of it. We are living in our own, self-imposed, 21st-century Tower of Babel.
I found this definition on the Psychiatry DataBase, website, PsychDB: "Communication includes any verbal or nonverbal behaviour (intentional or unintentional) that influences the behaviour, ideas, or attitudes of another individual."
/The Backstory
"H" recognized the caller ID, "S". A few weeks earlier, he and "S" had attended a May 1 rally. They had a short, pleasant exchange and then carried on--uneventfully.
No sooner had "H" extended a cheerful 'hello' than he was met with a bitter rant. When he was finally able to get a word in edgewise, he said he didn't have a clue what he had done or said to trigger such anger. Apparently, in a group email thread, "H" had agreed with an earlier comment regarding an artist's surreal portrait of a politician; that relatively innocent comment triggered "S." It ended badly, leaving "H" shaking his head in disbelief.
It was a textbook example of how tangled communication can become as it moves from writer to reader, speaker to listener, and one observer to another. Apart from the millions of phone and person-to-person conversations, we engage in billions of daily digital exchanges.
Estimated Total Daily Exchanges:
Emails: ~9.7 billion
SMS/MMS: ~6 billion
Other Chat Platforms: ~10 to 15 billion (conservative estimate)
On any given day, US chat and email exchanges range from 25.7 to 30.7 billion, a cacophony of signals ranging from the innocent to the offensive and disturbing. All of this against a complex backdrop of evolution, genetics, and family pathology coloring our perceptions and how we communicate with one another.
In addition to what is considered "normal" communication, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, identifies five distinct communication disorders:
Speech Sound Disorder (previously called Phonological Disorder)
Childhood-Onset Fluency Disorder (Stuttering)
Genetics
There is also some evidence that human aggression and tribal behavior may have evolutionary roots and influence on our ability to communicate. More
In-group cooperation and out-group suspicion of outsiders
Dominance-seeking, territoriality, and retaliation
Gene-influencing effects on neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine and their impact on fear response, impulsivity, and aggression.
Cultural and Psychological Yin Yang
Based on our current understanding, homo sapiens ability to use language and complex reasoning to engage in abstract thought sets us apart from other species. Our "darker" selves coalesce around ideas, beliefs, and identities that have resulted in a patchwork of ideological, religious, ethnic, and nationalist conflicts.
Our "lighter" selves are capable of empathy, cooperation, and altruism--behaviors that helped build cultures bound by a set of guiding principles, institutions, and laws, a framework designed to restrain our "darker" selves. This, of course, assumes that we have agency, free will, and the ability to chart our own futures. Hmmmm.
Layered on top of all of this, enter 21st-century science and technology--simultaneously exciting and scary. For better or worse, our lives and our behaviors are intertwined with the Internet, AI, and smartphones. These technological innovations have radically altered the manner, frequency, and breadth of our communication.
We have unconsciously been drawn into information spheres that reflect our social, political, and religious biases, siloing ourselves into broad, generational tribes, shaped by the times and the events into which we were born.
Generation Name | Approximate Birth Years | Brief Characteristics / Defining Experiences |
The Greatest Generation (GI Generation) | 1901-1927 | Came of age during the Great Depression; Fought in World War II; Resilience, civic duty, sacrifice. |
The Silent Generation (Lucky Few) | 1928-1945 | Grew up post-World War II; Experienced Great Depression as children and WWII in youth; Traditional, conformist, value stability. |
Baby Boomers (Boomers) | 1946-1964 | Post-WWII baby boom; Experienced major social/cultural shifts (civil rights, Vietnam War); Optimism, strong work ethic, counter-culture (youth). |
Generation X (Gen X) | 1965-1980 | Grew up with shifting societal values, economic uncertainty, rise of personal computing; Independent, resourceful, skeptical, adaptable. |
Millennials (Generation Y, Gen Y) | 1981-1996 | Came of age at the new millennium; Rise of internet/social media, 9/11, 2008 recession; Tech-savvy, experience-focused, socially conscious. |
Generation Z (Gen Z, Zoomers, iGen) | 1997-2012 | Grew up entirely in the digital age (smartphones, constant connectivity); Digitally native, diverse, pragmatic, socially aware. |
Generation Alpha (Gen Alpha) | Early 2010s - Mid 2020s (e.g., ~2010-2024) | Children of many Millennials, Born entirely in the 21st century, Growing up with deeply integrated tech, AI, and social media. |
Generation Beta (Gen Beta) | Mid 2020s - Mid 2030s (e.g., ~2025-2039) | The newest emerging generation Will be shaped by ongoing AI advancements, further technological integration, and future societal/environmental conditions. |
The Analog and Digital You
Before Gen X, before the Internet, smartphones, and the "internet of things", there was already much that was known about earlier generations, and filed away on paper by government agencies, financial institutions, healthcare providers, employers, educational institutions, direct marketing companies and publishers, private investigators, community organizations, and retail and catalog companies. Fast forward to today, and the amount of information about the public and private you is frightening—more on this in a future blog.
So, what does this have to do with communication? The short answer: lots. Now, more than ever, our "digital dossier" plays an outsized role in influencing our psyche. We are presented with a unique version of the world. Our daily interactions with other psyches--family, friends, acquaintances, strangers--possess a complexity shaped by our genes, physical and mental health, environment, belief system, family pathology, and whatever metabolic and/or pharmaceutically induced "you" is present at any given moment in time.
Conspiracies and Trust
"A conspiracy theory is defined as a belief that a secret but influential group is controlling events behind the scenes."
Our 21st-century Tower of Babel has become a perpetual grist mill, swallowing facts, fiction, propaganda/opinion, conspiracy theories, and other nonsensical pulp. Shaped by algorithms and AI, it is available on our digital doorstep, 24/7--creating a feedback loop that reflects our psyche. We are open, optimistic, engaged, hopeful, or withdrawn, pessimistic, paranoid, and distrustful, or somewhere in between.
Here's a sampling of the conspiracies that are being fed into the grist mill.
Elites are intentionally replacing native populations with immigrants to alter voting patterns and culture.
World leaders and celebrities are actually reptilian aliens in disguise... citing supposed video “glitches” and odd behaviors as proof.
FEMA has built secret camps to detain dissenters under martial law.
Airplane contrails are actually chemical agents being dispersed for population control or weather modification.
Flat Earth and Dead Internet Theories
It claims the Earth is not a globe, and the Dead Internet theory suggests most online content is generated by bots or AI.
So, how do we ever hope to reason with anyone who embraces beliefs that fly in the face of reason, facts, logic? Can we ever hope to bridge these yawning communication gaps, or will we continue our march into the next mass extinction?
I welcome your feedback and comments. Paz.
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