Tower of Babel

Sometimes, when I overhear people speaking in a language other than English, I am struck with the desire to understand what they are saying. It’s as if they are in another place, and I want to enter their world, even if only for a moment. Language separates us, it seems, and I find it frustrating.

I have two clients who immigrated to the U.S. many years ago. They speak English very well and, in fact, have both written books in English. Yet, behind the words are other cultures, other ways of looking at the world. I learned this lesson back in college a lifetime ago when I dated a student from South America. His worldview was Brazilian, and though we were using English words in our conversations, often we didn’t seem to be getting through to each other. He spoke from his culture, and I listened from mine.

I’ve been pondering this lately because I realize that the same miscommunication occurs between people who speak the same language — people who are related, who have grown up together, or who know each other well. In families, sometimes, it seems that like one person is speaking Greek and another Chinese. Consider two siblings who are engaged in a heated discussion. They report the argument to their mother. Ironically, both recall exactly the same words. “She said this; I said that.” But the interpretation of those words is wildly different. Whom does mom believe? Both children are reporting the conversation the way they heard it, but apparently, what they heard is poles apart.

It wasn’t always that way according to the Old Testament. Once upon a time, everyone spoke the same language. After the great flood (the one where Noah built the ark), supposedly, they all moved east and ended up in the city of Babel There, they built a huge tower that would reach all the way to heaven. They dedicated their tower not to God, but to the glory of man. As the story goes, God was not happy about that and expressed His displeasure by scattering the people all over the earth and making them speak different languages. That was the biblical origin of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

However it began, we’ve had thousands of years and about as many books to help us fix the problem. I’ve actually written one or two of those books. Yet, frankly, I don’t think my communication skills are any better than anyone else’s. My books and most of the others I’ve read are about communication skills: how to ask questions, summarize what you’ve heard, keep the conversation on track, etc. But I’m not at all sure that skills alone will do the trick. If I say “Why are you doing that?” and you hear, “Don’t do that!” we’re off the bad start.

We hear and interpret words based on our individual perception, which filters what comes in through our senses (what we hear and see and touch) and all of our life experience (what we recognize from our store of memory). No two people hear or see things the same way; no two people have the same life experience. Thus, no two people interpret a spoken message the same way.

So, what we still have in our sophisticated, educated, enlightened society is a modern version of the Tower of Babel.