Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The fall of the Tower of Babel

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

"The Tower of Babel has fallen, writes social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Atlantic. We Americans no longer speak the same language or recognize the same truth." I think this is an interesting observation, not so much because nobody has noticed this before (it's not hard to see if you look) but because of the implications. Now Joanne Jacobs is inclined gto blame this on social media or overbearing parents or generational change. But I personally just think it's a think that happens once things get to a certain point. As Haidt writes, "Babel is not a story about tribalism; it's a story about the fragmentation of everything. It's about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community." This just happens. The question is, what do you do about it? Me, I embrace diversity as a virtue, and to preserve the peace, I embrace equity and inclusion. Jacobs? "E pluribus was supposed to lead to unum — not Babel," she says, opting, I think, for conflict instead.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Nov 12, 2024 09:22 a.m.

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