Pride and arrogance are not something new.
We all saw what happened in the Tower of Babel, but we don’t have to look hard and find more current examples in our day-to-day lives.
I think that the real big story in the original was actually the punishment they got for being so arrogant.
TL;DR for those who don't know: the people of Babylon built a magnificent tower, a hallmark of Human ingenuity and cooperation. As the tower rose, so did their arrogance and self-pride; some even felt that they were godlike with their abilities.
“I did this” was a common thought for them, and they could not see how wrong it was.
God saw this saw wasn't very pleased.
Not only are they fooling themselves into thinking they are god-like, this arrogance makes them feel superior to their surroundings- be it the people not directly involved in building the tower (someone needs to feed all these workers, don’t they?) and even in-between themselves.
God could have finished the story very easily with a minor earthquake or a fire, but she wanted to teach them a lesson, so she took away their ability to communicate and cooperate.
Suddenly everyone is exposed as the tiny piece of the puzzle they really are.
Unable to work in cooperation with each other, the tower business very quickly collapsed and people went as far away as possible from that broken dream.
Dispersed among the four wings of the earth, people managed to build their own towers, but they are all just faint memories of the magnificent tower of Babel which we all yearn for in our daily doing.
I know this is LinkedIn so I'm not here to preach about how important it is to be humble and invest in efficient communication within teams.
I actually got into this while recording the session on the ICH Guideline M4Q, which lays the foundation to communicate product Quality and CMC with the regulatory authorities (and well, with anyone really).
Here are the first two minutes:
For more, check out my free crash course on Drug Development and CMC: Crashcourse.BeyondCMC.com