0049 Chapter three concerns the topics of linguistic common origin and taxonomy.

From this examination, so far, I speculate (riffing off of Farrell’s speculations) that the normal context of an ideology of a common tongue_3a derives from an actual translation stone_2a, which converts one language to another so well that it_2amaintains the potential for ‘technical work and group cohesion’_1a. 

0050 So, to me, the question that chapter three addresses asks, “Is this ideology built into our brains, bodies and bones?”

What_2a is required for the normal context of a common language_3a to manifest the potential of  ‘the technical and group cohesion offered by one people_1a?

Would a translator stone_2a do the trick?

0051 Here is a picture of what I am talking about.

0052 Farrell starts with the earliest scientific formulation that the coincidence of one language and one people is bound through time.

The first language family to be identified is the Indo-European.  Wonderful social science is accomplished by Edward Sapir (1884-1939 AD), Alfredo Trombetti (1866-1929) and others.  All Indo-European languages trace back through time to one proto-Indo-European people. 

After that, further attempts at classifying language families are resisted for years

0053 Why?

Well, I suppose that it must be due to a “translator’s stone issue” of some sort.

As it turns out, many Indo-European languages are written, as well as oral.  So, writings, preserved through time, independently corroborate the similarities and differences identified by linguists.  In effect, writing independently verifies changes in phonetics and semantics over time.  Writing operates as a psychometric “translator’s stone”.

0054 In the 1960s, Joseph Greenberg refashions the (writing-focused) translator’s stone into an exercise of pattern recognition and statistics.  Farrell offers samples demonstrating the exercise.  Our gestalt-tendencies allow instant recognition of patterns that are then validated using statistical methods.  What are the chances that this pattern would be recognized and not any other?  Greenberg identifies language families as gigantic as Indo-European.  Indeed, even families of families can be discerned with his new translator stone… er… I mean to say, “methodology”.

Merritt Ruhlen, Greenberg’s student, publishes the crown publication in 1994, bringing the coincidence of language and ethnos (Russian for “a people lacking explicit abstractions indicating that they are a people”) all the way back to the origin of our species.

(Ethnos? See Looking at Michael Millerman’s Chapter (2022) “…Dimensions of Dugin’s Populism” appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in late February 2023.)

0055 So, if hominins fashion a common tongue at the start of our own species, then what do our ancestors talk in the times prior to say, 250,000 years ago?

The answer, according to Razie Mah, is hand talk.  Speech is added to hand talk at the start of our own species.  Humans practice hand-speech talk for, say, 240,000 years, and now, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.

Hmmm. I suppose that a Tower of Babel Moment may be hidden in that hypothesis.

0056 But, a hand-speech talk to speech-alone talk Tower of Babel Moment is not what Genesis 11 reports.

Genesis 11 reports something very different.  Genesis 11 reports the conviction that one language means one people and, if everyone holds that conviction, then a civilization can accomplish whatever it sets out to do.

If the people really speak different languages, all that one needs is a topogram that maps one language onto the others, and visa versa, in order to establish that all belong to a common tongue and therefore constitute one people.

0057 Yes, the correlation between language and people, our talk-tradition and ourselves, is woven, by evolution, into the fabric of our being, so much that if we believe that we practice a common tongue, even though we obviously do not, then we are transubstantiated into one people.

0058 Farrell comes to the verge of articulating this realization, but does not.

Why?

He forges a path for others to follow.  The connection between a common language and genetic affiliation smells too sweet for him to realize that the flower produces a seed and that the seed may germinate into an illusion.  The mind-independent reality of the translator’s stone substantiates the mind-dependent reality that we all share a common tongue and therefore, are one people.

Others, following his path, can pause and say, “Hey, this may sound crazy, but what if the link between talk tradition and people is built into our very constitution, and what if all someone has to do is convince us that we have the same language, then we are caught, hook line and sinker, by the illusion that we are one people?”

Here is a picture.

0059 And now, an irony.

The Akkadian language, the language that most likely associates to Nimrod, the mighty you-know-what, belongs to the Semitic family of spoken languages, which is as impressive as the Indo-European.

The Sumerian language, the language that most likely associates to the ones who concocted the Tower of Bab-ilim story, is a linguistic isolate.  An “isolate”?  Yes, Sumerian is unrelated to any family of languages.

0060 This is an embarrassing topic for students of ancient Mesopotamian civilization.

So, experts rarely mention the fact.

After all, why would Sumerian be an linguistic isolate?

And, what would that fact have to do the formation of civilization of southern Mesopotamian?

Who knows?

So, who cares?

The stone that the builders reject, becomes the cornerstone of a new foundation.

0061 In chapter four, Farrell introduces the reader to Gottfried W. Leibniz (1646-1716 A.D.), a polymath in a century filled with polymaths.  Leibniz writes volumes.  Many of his works are not translated into English.  So, let the reader beware.  At the same time, let that not deter us.  Farrell picks up a translation of a short article (circa 1696) titled, “On the Principle of Indiscernibles”.

0062 I suppose that, if one tries, one can discern something.

But, what if that ‘something’ is indiscernible?

0063 Leibniz writes (I follow Farrell’s quotation), “All that we have said here arises from that great principle, that the predicate is in the subject.”

Does this apply to the Tower of Babel story?

Here is my guess.

0064 The translator stone_2a is a predicate.  It_2a is a psychometric object that actualizes the potential of ‘group cohesion’_1awhile sustaining a normal context, the ideology of a common language_3a, that maximizes that potential_1a.

The Tower of Bab-ilim_2c is a subject.  It_2c is the psychometric object that actualizes the potential of ‘alchemic knowledge’_1c while sustaining the hidden normal context_3c, the manipulation of celestial beings_3c, which may include “stars” like Nimrod, a mighty hunter and, no doubt, ruthless psychopath.  The administrators want Nimrod’s name on a tower that puts the Egyptian pyramids to shame.

0065 Leibniz’s proclamation concerns the principle of indiscernibles.

Farrell passes into the mists of that principle.

Who can discern, in the haze of a story about the confounding of languages, a Tower of Babel moment, which, to me, corresponds to the loss of efficacy of a translation stone?

0066 Does Farrell suggest that Leibniz seeks to recover the translation stone of translation stones, one that brings us to the beginning, that is, to the time when speech is added to hand talk, in the form of anatomically modern humans?

From this moment of divergence, all spoken languages radiate in time and space, except for a handful of isolates.  And, never mind about the issue of hand-speech talk.

This is not about isolates or hand-speech talk.

0067 Leibniz seeks to discern a translation stone that puts the one in the land of Shinar to shame.  Leibniz invents the calculus.  Plus, he envisions a lost form of philosophical analysis that imitates the calculus, in so far as it translates nature’s language into human discourse.  All that is needed is a map.  A topogram.  A translation stone.

Leibniz is not alone in his search for “characteristica universalis”.  Francis Bacon (1561-1626 AD) writes his own fictional manifesto, The New Atlantis, as an epilogue to his mechanical-philosophy oriented Novum Organon.

0068 Does Bacon’s towering manifesto and topographic mechanical philosophy overlay onto the actualities of the Tower of Babel construction?

Here is how that might look.

0069 Okay, back to Leibniz.

In 1679, a work entitled, “An Introduction To A Secret Encyclopedia”, circulates among later-to-be labeled, “enlightenment” thinkers.  

An Introduction To A Secret Encyclopedia mentions technocracy.

Now, if I were to put “technocracy” into the above interscope, then what slot would I choose?

How about the situation level normal context_3b?

0070 Leibniz presents a long list of the arts involved with a complex administration of the secret encyclopedia.

Where do these arts go?

Perhaps, they go with the perspective-level potential_1c.

Here is my prior guess, adjusted.

0071 Farrell highlights one of the arts: the art of subtlety.

This art is on display in Looking at Daniel Dennett’s Book (2017) “From Bacteria, to Bach, and Back”, appearing in Razie Mah’s blog during the month of December 2023.

0072 Indeed, this reader suspects that Farrell’s line of thought is designed to carve a deconstructive path into the art of subtlety, as well as the art of the obvious, in order to allow entrance to those who, like himself, are neither commoner nor aristocrat.

The art of the obvious pertains to what is intersubjectively accepted by commoners as “objective”.  Yes, the translator stone is real.  It is more real than the plain observation that the people of the Shinar plain speak Sumerian and Akkadian.  The translation stone is a psychometric object capable of altering social conditions.

The art of subtlety pertains to what is subjectively accepted by the commoner as “suprasubjective”.  Yes, the translator stone verifies the ideology that we all speak a common language and therefore, are one people.  If many people believe it, then that turns the translation stone into a psychometric object.

Yes, both arts are at work in the psychometrics of the translator stone_2a and the Tower of Bab-ilim_2c.

0073 All sorts of philosopher stones have been fashioned.

I suppose that, in the beginning, one of them worked as advertised.

What Farrell points out, in his spiral-staircase ascent through his deconstructive augur, is that all the nascent figures of the western enlightenment, suspect that this is the case.  All that we need to do is rediscover the one philosopher’s stone that works.  A translator stone connects us to the beginning of human kind, even to before the beginning of our kind.  A philosophical instrument translates the language of nature into the language of humans.  This alchemical recipe will even convert lead into gold.

0074 And so, I may pencil in a few more elements to Francis Bacon’s own Bab-ilim.

0075 Farrell concludes chapter four with speculative fireworks, launched from the platform of Leibniz’s characteristica universalis and the Nimrod-administration’s topogram that converts Sumerian to Akkadian and back again.  Content-level actualities_2a generate a normal context_3a and potential_1a that allow people_1a… well, at least the representatives_2c of the people_1a… or better, the people_2c who claim to represent the people_1a… to challenge God_3c or at least, achieve ends_3c that are hidden beneath a blanket of official propaganda_2c.

0076 The popular Cabbala represents a translation stone_2a, of sorts.

Jacob Boehme’s occult references to an Adamic language_3a, a Natursprache_3a, intimates the hidden potential of everyone working from the same playbook_1a… er… illusion_3a.

Illusion?  Delusion?

0077 Here I must pause to plug the examination that marks the start of 2023, just as this review ends the year.  In January of this year, Razie Mah opens with Looking a Alex Jones’s Book (2022) “The Great Reset”.  The theatrical Alex Jones labors to reveal illusions and delusions.  That is his mission and his gift.  In the analysis, two words are defined.

An illusion is a mind-independent reality that is regarded as mind-dependent.  The psychometric translator stone is a mind-independent reality that is regarded as a sign that there is a common language, hence, a common people (that is, a mind-dependent being).

A delusion is a mind-dependent reality that is regarded as mind-independent.  On the perspective level for the construction of the tower, the mind-dependent reality of alchemical knowledge_1c supports a mind-independent manipulation of celestial beings_3c.

0078 How does one discern all this?

The predicate is in the subject.

Here is a picture.

0079 Farrell turns the metaphor of the topogram inside out.

Surely, the radiation of languages from an original proto-Indo-European people is documented by writing.

What about a radiation of almost all the spoken languages of the world from a single population, say 250,000 years ago?

This radiation cannot be documented by writing.

What about petroglyphs?

Does the commonality of petrographic symbols validate the impression of a continuity that stretches from the start of our species to the Tower of Babel Moment that precedes the Tower of Babel Story in Genesis 11?

0080 Farrell suggests that we may turn to the last Renaissance man… or maybe, the first figure of the western enlightenment… for further insight into the principle of indiscernibles.

0081 Before I go there, I want to pause and gaze back to the beginning of Farrell’s journey: the eleventh chapter of Genesis.

Here is a numerological picture for the number eleven.

0082 Yes, this sounds goofy, but in terms of English puns, “eleven” sounds like “leaven”.  Leaven makes bread dough rise.  It is yeasty.  It is like something that grows in something else and ferments it.  So, chapter 11 is the yeast in the bread dough… of what?

If man does not live on bread alone…(see point 0041).

Then, what about base ten?

Base ten calls to mind two hands, working together, so maybe, chapter eleven leavens chapter one.

0083 In chapter one, God creates our world, step by step, in what looks to be a sequential evolutionary process.

In chapter eleven, Nimrod’s administrators create a tower, step by step, by commanding bricks to be made according to strict technical specifications.  The bricks must be burnt thoroughly. The administrators are able to accomplish this goal because their immigrant slave labor think that they are of one people with the elite.  Why?  The translator stone tells them so.

One must never underestimate the power of people to do what they evolved to do or to be what they evolved to be.  We evolved to recognize that one language means one people.  And what does one people do?  They work together.

So, of course, immigrant slave labor will work as if they are “stakeholders”.  They think that they are.  Fools.

The administrators are not the God of all creation.

Instead they are at war with God.

0084 Okay, let me try that again.

Base ten calls to mind two hands, working together.  So, maybe, chapter eleven leavens the stories of Adam and Eve.

On one hand, the story of Adam and Eve is not the subject of Farrell’s discourse.  However, it serves as a predicate to the Tower of Babel story as subject.  How so?  According to Saint Augustine, Adam and Eve stand at the origin of our kind. Each one of us descends, through begatting (and don’t tell me that the Genesis writers are unfamiliar with that term) from Adam and Eve.  The idea is implied in the letters of Saint Paul.

Unfortunately, modern genetics disproves Augustine’s thesis.  If a species starts with the union of one pair, scientists expect a genetic bottleneck.  Geneticists do not observe a bottleneck for the start of the species, Homo sapiens.

0085 Does that leave us empty handed?

No, the Fall of Adam and Eve essentially corresponds to a Tower of Babel Moment.  Adam and Eve are on one hand.  The Tower of Babel is on the other.

Theological nomenclature supports the suggestion.  Chapter one of Genesis is typically referred to as “the Creation Story”.  Chapter 2.4 through 11 are typically labeled, “the Primeval History”.  So, the stories of Adam and Eve and the story of the Tower of Babel bookend the Primeval History.

So much for two sequential ones in base ten.

0086 What about base two?

Let me start with the social construction of the Tower of Bab-ilim.

Now, let me consider that numerology business in terms of (1) presence and (0) negation.

Okay, now I consider the virtual nested form in the realm of actuality for social construction of the Tower of Bab-ilim.

The negation within the number eleven corresponds to the perspective-level actuality_2c.

Isn’t that a coincidence?

0087 Now, I replace the potential_1c underlying that negation_2c with divine intervention.

0088 That does the trick.  Eleven goes to zero.  The blame game begins.

Some think that numerology can substantiate any claim.

For proof, one need look no further.

0089 But wait!

I have another association for base two.

This associate recapitulates base 10, which presents the stories of Adam and Eve as 1 and the Tower of Babel story as 10.

Here, the beginning of the Primeval History is 2⁰ and the end is 2² and the middle is 2¹.

Here is the association.

0090 In this, the Tower of Babel_2c represents the culmination of what the serpent in the Garden of Eden tells Eve during the drama of temptation_2a.  The fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil_2a is the predicate.  The Tower of Babel_2c is the subject.

Does that suggest that the translation stone_2a, the thing that turns Sumerian and Akkadian into a common language, is a fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

Does the seed of the fruit that Adam and Eve ate germinate and grow into theTower of Bab-ilim_2c?

Does the seed of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil predicate the subject of all social manifestations of evil dangerous enough to challenge God?

0091 Has numerometrics isolated a new, postmodern, philosopher’s stone?

Numbers can tell me anything.

0092 At the start of chapter five, Farrell appeals to his regular readers.  Recall, The Gaza Death Star Deployed (2003) presents a hypothesis that the Great Pyramids of Egypt stand for a weapon of mass destruction.

0093 Well, it sure worked on the people on the plain of Shinar.

They got it in their heads that, because they practiced a common language, they could beat the Great Pyramid in terms of scale and psychometric capability.

Then, God destroyed them.

0094 What type of weapon is this?

The question sets the last Renaissance intellectual, a Jesuit, Fr. Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680 AD) into cognitive motion.  Farrell dwells on Kircher’s engravings, which are at once informative (for commoners) and fantastic (for fellow elites).

0095 What does Kircher say about the Tower of Babel?

Well, first, Kircher does not have nice things to say about Nimrod.  I will only mention that Nimrod worships fire, which should have inspired those industrious, illusion-enthralled, immigrant laborers on the plain of Shiner to be more studious in thoroughly burning their bricks.

That is not all.

I ask, “What does fire leave?”

Ashes.

0096 Second, Kircher draws a taciturn association between Nimrod and Saturn.  Both are lords.  Both are titans.  Plus, Nimrod’s administrators construct a tower that incinerates the entire civilization.  Only ashes remain.  Smoldering, vengeful, nasty ashes.  Sounds like Saturn to me.

0097 Third, the scale of the project renders it… unlikely… at best.  In order to reach the firmament, roughly corresponding to the the orbit of the moon, five million laborers adding a mile to the top of the tower per week would not even come close to the moon, even after 400 years of work.

0098 Fourth, there are other options.  What if the tower is the platform for some sort of weapon.  One could place a giant lens (or a parabolic mirror) on top and smoke enemies from a great distance, using the focused rays of the sun.

In recounting this, Farrell reminds the reader of the importance of optics.  Optics are foundational to the psychometric sciences.  So is scale.  So is time.

That brings me back to Saturn, the Titan once named Kronos.  Kronos is the titan who ate his own children.  Kronos is time itself.   His wife, tiring of his ploy, offers a stone for one of them.  Kronos swallows the stone whole.  Then, his wife hides the infant, who grows into who else?… Zeus.

0099 The word, “Chronos”, needs rehabilitation.  Modern psychometrics have dealt with worse.   Today, human resources use software named, “Chronos”, in order to keep track of time for employees.  

0100 In chapter six, Farrell celebrates the wormhole, the spiral staircase, drilling into the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of the natural and the social sciences.  Farrell asks the reader to take a look.  Why?  Farrell wants the reader to explore, if not further tunnel into, the modern gate of the gods, the postmodern psychometric sciences.

0101 I once called them “interventional sciences”.

Then, the term, “advocacy sciences” seemed to fit.

Now, the qualifier, “psychometrics”, captures my imagination.

0102 Farrell offers a few suggestions before closing.

But, I cling to the lessons that Farrell offers.

0103 First, Farrell emphasizes the relatedness between Greenberg and Ruhlen’s linguistic families and the genetics of populations that speak the same language.  The association between spoken languages and genetic groups is undeniable and supports the hypothesis that the vocal track is exapted for speech by a small population at the origination of our own species, Homo sapiens.

According to Razie Mah (in The Human Niche), speech is added to hand talk at the start of our species.  Humans practice hand-speech talk for over 200,000 years.  But now, all civilizations practice speech-alone talk.  So, there is a transition.  Mah calls it, “the first singularity”.  The transition is dramatized in An Archaeology of the Fall.  The transition is stated plainly in The First Singularity and Its Fairy Tale Trace.  Both are available at smashwords and other e-book venues.

This examination further suggests that Greenberg-Ruhlen’s association is ingrained in humans, so that the impression of a common language will trigger the perception of one people.

0104 The coincidence between linguistic family and genetic heritage poses a problem for an obvious (or “exoteric”) reading of the Tower of Babel Moment.  When isolated, both language and genetics naturally diverge.  So, a Tower of Babel Moment is not required to explain the diversity of languages to the modern mind.

0105 Second, the scientific notion of the co-evolution of diverse languages and populations suggests the potential of a translator that renders any one spoken language into any other.

Indeed, if an expectation of the co-evolution of languages and populations is built into the human phenotype, as an adaptation, then this nascent awareness would be a good target for a society-wide illusion.

Third, the disruption of that illusion (and the delusions built upon that illusion) entails widespread societal… confusion.

Such is the subtle (or “esoteric”) reading of the Tower of Babel Moment.

0106 To conclude, I would like to associate Abram to the fall of Ur III.  Why?  The demise of Ur III marks the end of Sumerian as a spoken language.  Sumerian continues as a written language for centuries longer.

As a spoken language, Sumerian dies.  Akkadian remains.

The language is confounded for the Sumerians, not the Akkadians.  The Tower of Babel is a story coming from an “insider” who now finds himself an “outsider”.

0107 Also, consider the societal fallout.

The Tower of Bab-ilim turns out to be a disaster.

Who gets the blame?

The last Sumerian families are finally ousted from their positions of institutional authority, to be replaced by the entitled children of the Nimrod-affiliated administrators (yes, the ones who cannot tell a thoroughly burnt brick form any other brick).  The purge will not be contained by any authority, because the purge covers the stupidity and incompetence and hubris of those in charge of the the tower’s construction.

0108 On that note, Haran dies before his father, Terah, in the land of his birth, Ur of the Chaldeans (Gen. 11:28).  So, Terah leaves with Abram and Sarai, along with Lot, the son of Haran, and settles in the land of Canaan (Gen 11:31).  But, there is no respite from the intrigue emanating from home, so Abram goes on, according to Genesis, and the Stories of the Patriarchs commence.

And what happens to Genesis?The stories from Adam and Eve to the Tower of Babel, become fairy tales that Sarah tells her children.

See Looking at Mark S. Smith’s Book (2019) “The Genesis of Good and Evil” appearing in Razie Mah’s blog in late January 2022.