Yesterday was Whit Sunday, and it also happened to be the Day of Pentecost. Broadcasting House (BBC Radio 4, 9 am) ended with an extract from The Whitsun Weddings, read most mellifluously by its author, Philip Larkin. Thence, as is my wont, to Dunblane Cathedral, where the lessons offered an intriguing comparison. Old Testament Lesson – Genesis chapter 11, verses 1 – 9. The Tower of Babel. In one sense it is a story offering an explanation for the phenomenon of the vast diversity, and disparity, of languages spoken across the world, just as the story of Adam and Eve offers an explanation for – well – pretty well everything.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
It occurs to me that that might actually be quite accurate. Life, human life, and with it the language enabling communication, had to start somewhere. Then, as peoples migrated, moved about the world, their language mutated in different directions, such that people who once lived together could no longer understand one another. A week ago I heard Michael Rosen in Word of Mouth (BBC Radio 4) talking about Proto-Indo-European, an ancient language which would develop into many languages in the world today, including English. So it would appear that languages naturally diverge. However the Genesis story does not depict this as a natural evolution, but rather as a divine intervention, one of retribution. God was displeased because the people inhabiting the plain of Sinar decided to construct a Ziggurat, a skyscraper. They wanted to do this in order to “make us a name, less we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
For some reason, God took exception to this. He did not wish that a tower reach to heaven. So he decided to frustrate the operation by rendering all the movers and shakers unintelligible to one another. I suppose that is a version of “divide and conquer”. Babel descended into babble. Is it purely coincidental that Babel and babble can refer to the same thing? We would need to ask the linguistic archaeologists who reconstruct Proto-Indo-European. But people cannot progress, if they cannot cooperate. As a result, the tower never got built, and the people were indeed scattered upon the face of the earth.
Then came the New Testament Lesson: Acts 2: 1 – 21.
And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.
Here is another story, in some ways diametrically opposed to the Babel story of the Old Testament. Here, there is a divine intervention to allow communication among a large and disparate group of peoples visiting Jerusalem. They seem to represent most of the known civilised world of the time: Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia. Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes. Cretes and Arabians…
I take my hat off to ministers of the church who dare to interpret such extraordinary tales. On this occasion the minister characterised the builders of the ziggurat as a totalitarian state which demanded of its people uniformity, and feared diversity. But the apostles – “the eleven” – were empowered by divine grace to move among strangers, to listen, to communicate, to understand, and be understood.
But sometimes I think such tales, much like the parables, defy interpretation. Perhaps if I’d been there, I’d have been one of the crowd who accused the apostles of being drunk. “What?” said Peter. “At 9 o’clock in the morning?”
Communication can be deeply deceptive. ScotRail are minded to replace the voice of their announcer with Artificial Intelligence (AI). That reassuring Scottish accent will have been adopted by a robot, one “Iona”. Last Tuesday, one of the journalists in the Herald took exception to this; and by coincidence, in the same issue there was a contribution from an external source, championing the use of AI in small to medium business enterprises in Scotland. The contrast provided a Babel – Pentecostal moment for me. I could understand the language of the AI critic, but not the AI champion. I wrote to the Herald, who kindly published me on Thursday:
Dear Sir,
There is a stark contrast between two articles in today’s Herald discussing Artificial Intelligence. On page 15, there is Neil Mackay’s “When AI kills off the ScotRail lady, you know we’re all in trouble… is this what we want?” And on page 17, there is the Agenda article, “How to make AI work for SMEs in Scotland” (Herald, June 3). Neil Mackay’s piece is concrete rather than abstract; it lays out an argument that is coherent, intelligible, and intelligent. The meaning is clear; the language is of the real world, humane, and passionate.
By contrast, the Agenda article, as a piece of prose, is almost entirely devoid of meaning. It could well have been written by a robot. Every sentence exhibits abstraction, and lack of precision. An example: “The application layer is not a black box, it’s an enabler, a multiplier of human potential.” I’ve read the piece several times, and still have no idea what the application in question is supposed to do.
George Orwell saw it all coming, this eradication of meaning in abstraction. In “Politics and the English Language” (1946), he translated a verse from Ecclesiastes into modern prose:
”I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”
Here is Orwell’s version in modern English:
“Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”
Well done to Neil Mackay for dumping AI from his phone.
Yours sincerely…
And on Saturday, the RSNO closed the season with an all Shostakovich programme: the Festive Overture, the Second Cello Concerto with soloist Daniel Müller-Schott, and the 11th Symphony – The Year 1905. I suppose Dmitri Shostakovich found himself trapped in the Babel of a totalitarian state. He had to lead a double life, simultaneously critical of the Soviet authorities, while being their darling. No wonder he kept a packed suitcase just inside the door to his flat, forever expecting the fateful nocturnal knock on the door. So his music, often sardonic and sarcastic, is babble to some ears, and deeply significant to others. And brutal. The RSNO is currently on top form. The culmination of the hour long symphony, with the sonorous ringing of the Muscovite bells, and the abrupt cessation of an enormous, tutti fortissimo, to leave the toll of a single bell, was absolutely shattering.
Maestro Sondergard thanked a full house for attending, and invited us all to reconvene on October 7th. He also invited us all to dump our devices. He said, “They are making us ill.”
I applauded.
jamescalumcampbell 