The Allegory of the Book of Enoch

 

We all know I am not a traditional believer in “God” with a capital G, as in omnipotent and omnipresent. However, I do find much of the Bible – emphasis on the New Testament – to be a pretty good User Guide to being a decent human.

But it is a much older book, The Book of Enoch, I have recently been intrigued by. Now the Book of Enoch is not canon (except for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church). However, Enoch shows up in Genesis in the story of Noah and the Flood. I am going to horribly oversimplify here before moving on. 

Also note that there is quite a bit of conspiracy around all this on the internet, but I am not interested in the “aliens or angels” theories.

(A great summary with lots of detail can be found here).

The story told in the Book of Enoch (or 1 Enoch) concerns mankind before the flood. Here are the MINIMAL highlights:

• There was a group of 400 Angles that watched over mankind. God had told them to be protective of the humans. But, over time, many among them lusted for the beautiful human women. They created a pact so that each of them had to descend to Earth in order to marry these women. (They became the Fallen Angels.)

• The children of these angels and the human women were the race of giants called Nephilim. The Nephilim brought forbidden knowledge, particularly of warfare and hate, to the people on Earth. This knowledge led to plagues, wars, and evil among men. Note that the Nephilim are mentioned at length in the Book of Enoch, but only twice in the accepted part of most Bibles (one in Genesis 6:1–4).

• This evil brought by the Nephilim (and by extension the fallen angels) is what caused God to bring forth the flood, and only Noah and his family survived with the animals. Note that Noah was Enoch’s grandson.

Now here is what I find fascinating. 

I immediately thought of the “watching angels” as the powerful men who run corporations, devices, companies on the internet, and occasionally countries. These people may have started with the best interests of people in mind. The internet, in particular, was thought to be a great place to share knowledge and ideas freely. We thought it would usher in understanding and communication. Powerful world leaders might have wanted to bring prosperity and equality to their citizens. Many for-profit corporations began with good intentions, like bringing power to the countryside, sharing data to stop criminals, or making transportation cheaper.

But those men (I use the term non gender specific, but they are overwhelmingly men) were seduced by power and money. They abandoned their self-defined roles as benefactors of humanity OR redefined themselves as irreplaceable.  Maybe they never were benefactors, but they might have believed it. Amazon started as a way to deliver less expensive books to a population served by a duopoly of large corporations. Facebook, now Meta, started as a way to build friendships on the internet. Ford started as a way to make money by making cheap cars for Americans. Google’s old motto was “Don’t Be Evil”.

Over time, these benefactors became Titans of Industry, and conflated being rich, lucky, and smart to being smarter than everyone else. Then to being indispensable and deserving of the respect of mere mortals.

They taught humans evil and new warfare. Algorithms prioritize outraged attention over simple engagement. They blurred the line between truth and lies, delegitimizing the truth. These new Nephilim don’t believe they should be subject to the same rules and laws as the rest of us. They purchase leaders the way we purchase movie tickets.

These new watchers and offspring have blinded us to hate, to a changing planet, and to each other. They have divided us more completely than the fall of the Tower of Babel (yes I know I am mixing my Biblical Metaphors here). So, will we see a metaphorical flood?

We are seeing more opposition to the worst of our new overseers. Australia and France are moving to end minors’ access to social media. Schools are trying to limit smartphone and/or AI content. Plans to tax plutocrats are being acted out at the sub-national level (because rich assholes own the Federal Government).

Stretching the metaphor further, we did see a response after the Gilded Age of populism bringing down the most egregious plutocrats of the early 1900s.

I don’t have a big point here, I just think it is fascinating.