Babel: linguistic diversity and human communication

Babel

Like the people in the Old Testament, who tried to reach God's home by building up a tower, today people of different countries and continents are trying to build up a bridge to rich for the perfect order by means of globalization. One of the many definitions of the concept explains that globalization is "the generalized expansion of international economic activity which includes increased international trade, growth of international investment (foreign investment) and international migration, and increased creation of technology among countries. Globalization is the increasing world-wide integration of markets for goods, services, labor, and capital." (http://minneapolisfed.org/econed/essay/topics/glossary05.cfm)

Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, director and Guillermo Arriga, writer of Babel, the film released in 2006, used the theme of globalization to present four different groups from four different countries. The symbol of advanced technology which is the item that is maybe the fastest to travel and the most trafficked object in the world is a "high-power rifle" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babel_(2006_film))that will be the reason, in fact, the pretext for the four groups to interconnect.

The film leaves many questions unanswered and the events are presented like a starting point for the audience and not like a complete story with an end. Globalization is neither condemned nor praised. It is, in fact the common sense or the lack of common sense of the people when taking advantage of it, that is or could be judged. Globalization enabled a Japanese to travel to Morocco where, at the end of his journey he gave his rifle to his Moroccan guide, Hassan. He intended it to be a gift and the audience is led to believe that he even felt good about doing that. Hassan became overnight the happy owner of an expensive technologically advanced rifle that helped him hunt better. Instead, the Japanese's action roles over like an avalanche and will eventually create a disaster. It is like in a bad dream, when someone discovers that the button pushed was connected to a mine that blew over and entire community.

Globalization also enabled an American couple, Richard and Susan Jones to travel to Morocco and spend their holidays there, while their twins were left home, back in the U.S. with their nanny, a Mexican woman who helped them raise the children since these were infants. and, of course, globalization enabled an American family, the Joneses, to have a Mexican nanny.

Globalization in itself cannot be classified as evil or good. It is people's task to give it a good or bad use. In Babel, Hassan, the former guide sells the rifle he received as a gift to his neighbor, a goat herder who needed it to protect his goats from the jackals. So far, the gun was not used to destroy human lives. It was used for hunting and it was further intended to be used against animals attacking a herd.

The Moroccan who bought it, Abdullah (what a symbolic name), father of two boys and a girl, goes carelessly about having a rifle around his children and even encourages them to use it to prove their hunting skills. He does not think about the major implications of a gun in the hands of two children left alone. He does not find necessary to explain the dangers of using such a powerful weapon when people are around and even the danger of hurting themselves with it. They will finally transform an innocent play in an attempted murder and even in a possible reason for deteriorating the relations between their country, Morocco and the U.S.A. when aiming with it a bus driving at a remote distance, on the road. They will unintentionally hurt Susan Jones who was traveling on the bus across the country, with her husband.