culture silentbob Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, 'Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.' And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 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, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.' And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men had built. And the LORD said, 'Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.' So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city.' Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth; and from there the LORD scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth." (Genesis 11:1-9) This is why we have different cultures and different beliefs and langauges today. because god confused people who wanted to get to heaven by building a tower. This story sounds like a fantasy to me. Sorry to those of you who believe the bible, but this just sounds nutty to me. 000721 ... typhoid sounds like entropy to me 000721 ... tourist Sounds like a case of highly specilzed language because of diversification as in a technical society.The accountants have their terms, Biologists another, If a computer programmer tries to explain just what makes an application work to a fisherman or conversly why it's best to use a particular type of fishing gear to the tech, there's a good chance neither will understand what the other has said.As we continue to specialize in our society we invariablly leave each other out of the loop.As long as things are co-dependent and functioning all is well, but let things get to far out of balance and it all falls down.Given time no one can truly remember what had gone before and so tales of God confounding the speach of man arise.People have an incredably short attention span.Time has erased many a civilization, and will no doubt do so again and again.I don't believe that the Hebrew Tribal Myths are to be taken at face value. I don't believe that the Hebrews do either. Maybe it is all in code like in the film PI? To me the key message in the Babylon story is that anything man puts his collective mind to CAN be attained. This Gives Me Hope. 001106 ... phil American culture tries to define itself. I see culture, in what we say on blather. You can tell when the Canadians are talking. Pigs fly down here. 020128 ... lycanthrope a person cannot be blamed or praised for the culture they are born into. Those who persecute unknowingly just by their middle class status are as born into it as the poor and disenfranchised who themselves are the objects of prejiduce. No one chooses their cultural legacy. The only place we have limited control over, and should be held responsible for is our individual reaction to said culture. 020531 ... biohazardous birdmad i've got so much culture, i could have come from a petrie dish 030106 what's it to you? who go blather from