The New Tower of Babel

The ski runs visible from the lounge of the luxury hotel glistened on this moonful night. A dozen or so revelers remained after the difficult series of meetings earlier in the day, and after the evening soiree, mostly to comfort one another for the disappointments that had been evolving, contrary to their expectations. Nonetheless, exquisite food and very special wine and spirits, and even a little dancing to the instrumental trio did much to allay their disquiet. Most of all the reassuring presence of their elderly advisor had the greatest impact.

He was a small man, with blunt rounded features and a pleasing bald head – a head that fit him and somehow did grace to his diminutive body. What hair he had lost up top was gathered in his full white eyebrows that lent a genial benevolence to his broad face.

It was nearing midnight and those guests who tired of the view of the bright slopes on the snow-clad mountain turned inward as the advisor began to speak. His voice was a deep one, and resonant, and within a moment or so the room had grown silent as the company took their seats, drinks in hand, almost with cheer, certainly with curiosity. They were in need of some good news, and who better than the advisor to deliver it?

The three musicians and the waiting staff were asked to absent themselves, which they did with courtesy, closing the tall doors and leaving the small avid group on their own, men in tuxedos, women in gowns and jewelry that was terrifically expensive though by no means ostentatious. Their gathered wealth surpassed the riches of at least fifty percent of the globe’s population. They were for the most part attractive people, people who smiled rarely but meaningfully, people with firm jaws, people who had tasted the manifold pleasures of the flesh, and then some, people who cared for the bodily vessels that supported their predominantly quiet personalities, people who held the reins and steered the ships of state unseen – but people who had been perturbed by recent developments, and somewhat shaken by them.

The advisor, beaming at the group, was their senior by a handful of years, and rich as the proverbial Croesus. Though not the wealthiest of the party, he was by far the most authoritative, revered for his ruthlessness and his philosophizing. He patted his forehead with an embroidered handkerchief, and smiled a close-lipped smile, and nodded before relaxing into his tooled-leather burgundy armchair.

“We not so happy few,” he began, chuckling. “Well, that simply means that there is time and room enough ahead. Small setbacks are often the prelude to the achievement of greater goals. But I don’t want to bore you, my dear friends, with platitudes and ‘positive thinking’ advice. I want to tell you a sort of parable. Lord knows we’ve heard enough all day about strategies and logistics and banking and politics and whatnot. No, let’s end this evening with something different. Will you indulge me?”

He raised a glass and the others followed and sipped, and he continued.

“For the world at large it is we who are the bulwark against chaos and terrible disorder. Those people –in their greater numbers and menial aspirations – are naturally unruly, with their quaint ideas about liberty. And they rumble on occasion, and they shout and they march: but they are powerless in the end. Their lives are lives of want, of frivolous and shallow wishes, of selfishness and violence. That world is, as it were, an unweeded garden. Our world, however, is the opposite: a realm of calm and order, the kind of order only we few can bring, a general one, one that respects our natural habitat, that preserves its resources, and salvages our ability to live in full – to live lives that transcend the meanness and pettiness of the masses.

“But to achieve this kind of orderliness and beauty – yes, there is profound beauty in order – sacrifices must be made, and difficult decisions. There are, frankly, far too many of ‘them’ – and the very paradise that is the right of aspiring people like us can never be attained with these raucous multitudes. I’m telling you nothing new, of course. Recently we showed how easy it is to bring them to heel, and more’s the pity the job wasn’t finished, and as a consequence all this bothersome noise has erupted here and there. But, as I said, these are small setbacks, and soon we will be able to make things enduringly correct.

“My point tonight to you, dear comrades, is that those people, despite appearances, are not our enemy. No, they may even deserve some sympathy because they are so dispensable and so … so small-souled. They are at worst an occasionally irksome adversary, and at best they do our bidding until the winnowing is complete. We really need so few of them to do the necessary things, thanks to the great scientific and technological advances only we, with our vast monies and will, could bring about.”

The small audience stirred uneasily, glancing at each other subtly, unsure of the advisor’s direction, and he saw it, saw the unease and the questioning, and he grinned.

“They – the masses, the multitudes, the little people, the many, call them what you will – accuse us of being Godless. But they are wrong, they are very wrong, and we are greatly misunderstood. We are their rightful hope, not the gods they purport to revere.

“In Chapter 11 of the Book of Genesis we are told about the Tower of Babel. It is a story that has been vastly misinterpreted, I think, and it is a story that reveals to us who our true enemy really is. Even those of us who are familiar with it have not understood it properly. You see, before the Tower was built all mankind had been united: ‘And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.’

“The goal of unity had already been achieved, the goal we ourselves strive for now! One world, one people! And in this unity the great people of the earth began to build, and the God of that time confounded them. ‘And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.’

“The God of that time confounded them and destroyed their unity and scattered them about, and why? Because he was a jealous God and he saw that the power of Man, when harnessed and properly led, would surpass his own. He was a God who was afraid of the creatures he made in his image and who, as the fulfillment of their truest destiny, would eclipse their creator!

“We are building another Tower,” the advisor said emphatically, “and we are nearly complete, and this time there is no God who can restrain us. Yes, he is there and we believe in his existence, surely we do, but we choose to vie with him and to vanquish him and to transcend. Our Tower is ‘builded’ – to use our affectionate Biblical language – of computations and quantum physics and of a Unified Intelligence – how I deplore the term ‘artificial’ – to wield a power that can change biology and consciousness and in the end – and we are so very close! – overcome mortal demise. Our path is no less than the path from human roots to celestial conquest.”

The advisor paused and raised his glass of whiskey to his lips, wetting them, and surveyed his listeners. The restiveness of the day had disappeared. The energies of the air had shifted: all was calm, all was beautiful once again, all was triumphant, and, most important, all was orderly.

“The tower we are building cannot be smitten,” he continued softly. “We were defeated once, but the years and years of the cooperation among and between the worthies of the world, have reached a culminating point. Only the God who attempts to oppose us will suffer defeat. And the minions of the world who survive the next decade will be grateful for the opportunity to serve us, their true leaders. It is we who dare to achieve, my friends, and in remaking ourselves we have outmaneuvered our own creator. Make no mistake, we believe in God, truly and deeply – and we believe in his defeat. That is the natural course of humankind.

“The next few years will be years of quieting the obstinate and their silly passions – like using sandpaper to smooth a rough piece of wood for polishing. And then our One World will take its rightful place, shepherded by the rightful few – by you here in this room with me who, if my own calculations are correct about the magnificent and exponential progress of our work, will soon overcome the claims of mortal flesh.

The advisor grinned and his hairless head reflected light.

“When Caesar become a god, he was merely a god in the imagination of the minds of the Roman plebeians. It was rather quaint, in retrospect. But our impending stature is hardly quaint: it is the truest fulfillment of our divine destiny. It will not be long from now, my friends. So take heart. I hope I have cheered you up a bit.”

He gave a small signal with his chin and the guests departed in silence and in calm and with a satisfying glow. Then, alone in the spacious luxurious lounge, the advisor walked under the high ceilings to the tall windows overlooking the white mountainside. He gazed at the large moon above the peaks, and raised his hand to the heavens.

“Father, forgive us,” he began, shaking with mirth while taking his leave.

Emanuel E. Garcia, M.D.

May 2025

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