Diversity – the origin story

Many traditions have stories that explain why there is such a diversity of people in the world.  A story from my tradition is the Tower of Babel. According to this story in the beginning all people lived in a place called Babel and spoke the same language.  Presumably they also looked pretty similar to one another.  At one stage they started to build a tall tower that they hoped would reach heaven.  God looked down on them and said this will not do, and caused them all to wake up the next morning speaking different languages.  The community soon fell apart and people moved away to other parts of the world.

Now you could take this as a story of a jealous and insecure God who did not want competition.  That would make this story deeply depressing and disturbing.  I interpret this story differently.  God was not jealous, he was beneficent, he was helping them.  God knew that the people who all lived together and shared the same ideas and technologies did not have what it takes to build a tall tower.  A tower built by such a well-meaning but ill-prepared group would inevitably fall and cause great harm. So God caused them all to speak different languages so that they would go aboard and learn new things by living in different environments.

Now in globally interconnected world, the descendants of the original group in Babel humankind are ready to come back together to resume work on the tower.  This time they have the diversity of knowledge, skills and attitudes required to complete the tower.