Horizontal Thought
Thoughts on Shemot 2018
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The Torah’s description of Am Yisrael’s
slavery in Egypt bears several striking similarities to the earlier episode of Migdal
Bavel. Whereas the people of “all of earth” had once come together to
construct a “city and a tower with its top in the heavens” with mortar and
bricks (Bereshit 11:1-4), Am Yisrael were now forced to use mortar and
bricks to build store-cities (Shemot 1:10-14). And similar to the motive of
that initial construction to “make a name” amidst the fear of becoming
“scattered over all the earth,” Pharaoh – “King Rameses” now feared that Am
Yisrael would “go up from the land” and thus commissioned the building of
“Rameses,” a city that bore his name.[1]
What is the underlying message of these parallels?
Consider, in this
context, the Torah’s very next narrative in Sefer Bereshit: the life of
Avraham. God’s first words to him of “Lekh lekha – go forth” (Bereshit
12:1) contrasted to the anticipated settling of Bavel’s city-construction. And
whereas the people of Bavel had futilely pursued a “name” with their stable
city, God then promised Avraham “a great name” (12:2) by means of his movement.[2]
We possess the
ability, as individuals and a society, to grow in two different directions:
vertically and horizontally. Growing upwards means strengthening preexisting
foundations by continuing along the path that was already begun. Growing
sideways, in contrast, means chasing your thoughts or dreams into the
precarious realm of the undiscovered. The “builders of Bavel” had singularly
focused their growth on a vertical trajectory. They feared the
instability of venturing out sideways, and so they built up on steady
foundations. Avraham’s growth was differently focused, however, as he followed
God’s word to spread out and grow horizontally. By doing so, Avraham
endeavored into the realm of the unknown and sought growth along the uncharted
paths that loomed at his sides.
The verdict is
still out regarding the essential role of the Internet to our intellectual
growth. There is no doubt that we have grown by the unprecedented ease of
access to information that it has brought. The question remains, however,
whether our continued intellectual growth as its result points horizontally
or vertically.
Describing the way
that the Internet changed his mode of thinking, Nicholas Carr wrote: “Once I
was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy
on a Jet Ski.”[3]
He explained that a well-rounded mind requires both an ability to find and
quickly parse a wide range of information and a capacity for open-ended
reflection.[4]
Carr therefore bemoaned our increased tendency to superficially skim
information as a result of Google’s immediate search result, and yearned for
the “deep, prolonged engagement with a single argument, idea or narrative”
which he had once enjoyed.[5]
Tom Nichols similarly
suggested that the art of “research” has been lost to people’s “search for
pretty pages online to provide answers they like with the least amount of
effort and in the shortest time.”[6]
Citing studies which found that people don’t actually read the articles from a
search on the Internet, but rather glance at the top line of the first few
sentences and then move on, Nichols reflected: “This is actually the opposite
of reading, aimed not so much at learning but at winning arguments or
confirming a preexisting belief.”[7]
Living in a world
that is increasingly governed by Google searches, our thoughts have become vertical.
We busy ourselves with building higher and higher in our collection of data.
The skill of horizontal thinking, however, is at risk of extinction. We
are slowly forgetting the art of creative and in-depth thinking.
The Torah’s
parallel descriptions of Am Yisrael’s slavery in Egypt and the episode
of Migdal Bavel teaches about the shortcomings of a society stuck in vertical
growth. Although Am Yisrael proliferated in Egypt – “And Bnei Yisrael
were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and grew very fast, and the land
was filled with them” (Shemot 1:7), their growth was stunted by an inability to
move outward. They were trapped in a land of vertical growth and the only way
out was redemption.
Although distant
from a life of physical servitude, today’s intellectual environment also suffers
from the difficulty of horizontal growth constraints. Paving our own path to
redemption, we must seek return to a world of imaginative thought and
discovery. Embracing our generation’s unique tools for vertical growth, we must
focus our minds upon the path of horizontal growth.
[1] For a further analysis of the similarities
between these two episodes, see Judy Klitsner’s Subversive Sequels in the
Bible (New Milford, CT, 2011), pg. 31-62.
[2] Recall our lengthy discussion
of this in our message for Lekh Lekha, “Movement.”
[3] Nicholas Carr, “Is Google Making Us Stupid? What
the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,” The Atlantic July/August 2008.
[4] Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet
is Doing to Our Brains (New York, NY, 2010), pg. 168.
[5] Ibid., pg. 156.
[6] Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise: The
Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why it Matters (New York, NY,
2017), pg. 111.
[7] Ibid., pg. 120.