The Billionaires and Babel

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.” The Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which mortals had built. And the Lord said, “Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them...

                                             Genesis 11:4-6 NRSV

Well, gajillionaire Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon,  launched into space this morning and may actually back on Earth by now. He's one of the Three Obscenely Rich Stooges who've decided to deploy portions of their wealth toward a competition to fly high.

 Last week billionaire Richard Branson won the "my rocket's bigger than your rocket" race, edging out  Bezos and Elon Musk. Branson and his team flew at thrice the speed of sound for about an hour, 85 kilometres above the Earth. Apparently this qualifies him for the title of astronaut.

Branson enthused that his narcissistic endeavour is the dawn of space travel for regular folk -- you know, those have a quarter to half a million to indulge themselves in such an enterprise. I find these self-indulgent spectacles sickening to be honest. We are still in the throes of a deadly pandemic, hundreds of millions are waiting to be vaccinated, millions have lost their jobs. Amazon has been criticized for its treatment of employees and Bezos made many billions during the past year and a half. 

At the same time the marvelous planet which is our home has a life-threatening fever and needs the resourceful of everyone, including the wealthy, to create solutions. Ironically, we are hearing that the Amazon region of South America is now emitting more carbon than it absorbs because of deforestation and fires. 

Recently a Noah's Ark theme park in in Kentucky announced that it will now build a Tower of Babel on site. It's a head-scratcher because that story from Genesis 11 is a cautionary tale about arrogance and hubris. But it may actually speak to our time because these  present-day billionaires with their massive egos aren't speaking the same language as the rest of us mortals. Why settle for a tower when you can launch into space?  

                                               Tower of Babel Pieter Brueghel the Elder 1563