Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Summary

Some Concerns)

Over the course of this series I have examined the notion of our voices being powerful, looking through the lenses of historical observation and scriptural example. Key takeaways that have emerged are that yes, our voices our truly powerful, but there are some very important caveats and concerns related to them. Specifically, we identified the three following issues:

  1. Not everyone has their own voice. Many use their voice only to echo the ideas and feelings of what is popular. Thus, they are not so much a voice as a loudspeaker for another person’s voice. It should be the great endeavor of all of us to find who we truly are, and that will only be accomplished through God. Only when we are our true person will we have true voice to share.
  2. Voices are much more powerful when compounded and interwoven. Communities that remain isolated remain stuck in the past. Ones that commune with each other make great leaps in technology and ideology.
  3. Combining voices gives great power, but that does not necessarily have to be good power. Indeed, we have seen that the more interwoven the voices of the world have become, the more we have developed the tools of our own demise. Self-destruction increases in lockstep with creation, creating a situation where our power to eradicate ourselves far outstrips our power to protect.

Conclusion)

Combining the first two points together, we see that there can be incredible power in keeping people mindless, making them drones repeating the same incantations over and over in unison. This is exactly how the most incredible acts of evil have been accomplished.

But surely that is not the only form of unity available. Every now and then, in brief and isolated moments, we get a glimpse of what happens when voices remain distinct, authentic, and self-authored, yet unite over shared ideals. On a larger scale, we have examples of this in the growth of the early Christian church, in the founding of America, and in the healing of the Alcoholics Anonymous program. These are only a few examples. There are other, smaller ones that occur all throughout the world.

True utopia will only occur when all the world is in such a state of individual synergy. Only when people have universally found their true selves, through God, and use their unique voices to progress the unified heavenly vision will we attain the ultimate potential of mankind. We can only imagine what incredible leaps and bounds we will make then. It will be an uncompromised advancement such as we have never seen before.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- The Dangers of Our Voices

Compounding Power)

We have discussed different aspects of the power in the human voice. As shown in the last post, when different voices are combined together the power grows exponentially. There are even scriptural examples of this, such as when the shout of the Israelites broke down the walls of Jericho. That is very impressive, but whether it is a good or a bad thing depends on which side of the wall you are on.

As we saw in the last post, the compounded power of universal communication has led to the most tremendous advances in technology, which have included many things that are good for mankind. But at the same time, we have also increased our methods of self-destruction. Historically that has involved the creation of artillery shells, nuclear bombs, and the ability to hack a nation’s infrastructure systems. Today we are seeing all-new threats, such as individuals becoming displaced by robotics and AI and social media dividing us into deeply entrenched factions. Our ability to divide and destroy has always grown in lockstep with our ability to create.

The scary thing is just how far our compounded power extends. Just as one Israelite shouting at a time would never bring down the walls of Jericho and one man working at a time would never build the Golden Gate Bridge, so too our weapons of destruction surpass any individual reach. Once these looming threats start to tip over, it will be well beyond anyone’s power to right them before they come crashing down on our heads.

Divine Forewarning)

And this danger was already known thousands and thousands of years ago. It was recorded for our own education, but we did not heed it. In the book of Genesis, Chapter 11, we read:

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.... And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

There was one language, and one people, and they spoke with one voice, desiring to build a tower all the way to heaven. While the scriptural account does not get explicit in their ultimate intentions, tradition has assumed it was to for a direct assault on heaven. Whether literally or symbolically, their effort was to make something so great that it could dethrone God.

Breaking from the hand of your own creator is logically the greatest act of self-destruction that anyone could ever do. Thus, it was an act of mercy and preservation when God broke their tower, and made them unable to combine their voices, and scattered them across the world. Yes, it made them weaker, but it also limited their ability to destroy themselves.

Today, we have progressively broken down those barriers. We have rediscovered each other, learned one another’s language, and found ways to combine our voices as one. We are much the same now as the people who built the tower of babel, and we seem to quickly be approaching another act of hubris and self-destruction.

Of course, every vision of paradise does necessitate all the people united as one, but it assumes that mankind has learned to let go of his tendency for self-destruction, so that he may unite without danger. That certainly has not happened today, so the danger of our united voices is very, very real.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Communication and Technology Revolutions

Leaps and Bounds)

Yesterday I mentioned the direct correlation between inter-cultural communication and the advancement of technology. The more people share their voices with one another, the more each is fertilized with the other’s ideas, and the more we advance as a whole. Also, as a culture expands in its technology, that has included enhancing their means of communication. Thus, one advancement leads more and more quickly to another, and so the pattern has been one of exponential growth.

In fact, every major advancement in communication leads to a spike in technological advancement. Here are the most notable examples:

  1. Early writing systems from 3000-2000 BC, followed by large-scale agricultural systems and bureaucratic states.
  2. The printing press from 1440, followed by the scientific and industrial revolution.
  3. Telegraph system from 1830s-1840s, followed by trains, long-distance transit and transportation, factories and distribution.
  4. Radio, telephone, and television from 1920s-1950s, followed by consumer appliances, personal automobiles, and rocket science.
  5. The internet from 1969, followed by software and home computers, globalized manufacturing, and robotics.

The Road Ahead)

Our communication technology has progressed from talking to our neighbors, to meeting each other across great distances, to writing down words that could be carried elsewhere, to having instantaneous communication with millions across the globe. Today we appear be on the cusp of yet another advancement in communication and technology. With the advent of AI, for the first time ever we have the ability to receive messages from the aggregate sum of millions of voices all at once. Given the wealth of historical writing included in these models, that includes being able to have conversations with those who are already dead. What sort of leaps in technology this may lead to remains to be seen, but we can only assume it will be similarly transformative.

It is also left to our imaginations what higher forms of communication could yet await us. Perhaps some sort of thought-to-thought or spirit-to-spirit communication would unlock the highest era. Perhaps some of those higher forms of communication are reserved for the life after this one, though.

Of course, we have to acknowledge that not all advancement and technology is good. There is much to be concerned about, much division and destruction before us, and the scriptures predicted this exact dilemma in the story of the Tower of Babel thousands of years ago. Tomorrow we will take a closer look at that story, and what it means for us today.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Cultural Advancement

An Old View)

Yesterday we discussed the physical range and speed of the human voice, and its ability to vibrate an awesome volume of air. Today we will consider another power of the human voice by examining its abstraction: communication.

One of the old mysteries of anthropology was the great disparity in development of different cultures. As the Western world expanded into the most remote corners of the world, it found people that were technologically far behind. Isolated tribes that lacked even writing systems, the wheel, and agricultural systems, to say nothing of firearms, ships, and medicine.

At the time, the simplest explanation was that some groups of people were fundamentally more advanced than other, almost like a different species. It was assumed by many that the savage could never be an educated man. But as these different worlds became more overlapped, there came opportunities for the tribesman to participate in the systems of the more advanced cultures, and it was discovered that any race and color could attain the same understanding and integration as any other participant in that culture.

A New Theory)

Now we live in a time where this experiment has played out repeatedly and universally. The old theories of superior and inferior races do not hold up to the reality that we have perceived. Having so many more data points to draw our conclusions from, a new pattern has emerged.

The factor that determines whether a culture is advanced or not is the amount of inter-cultural communication that that culture is subject to. Trade routes first caused drastically different people to become intimately familiar with one another’s language and customs. The English had to have an understanding of the Chinese, and the Chinese of the Arab. And they did not only trade in goods, but also in ideas. On the other hand, the isolated tribe in the wilds of Africa remained as a people frozen in time, remaining at the same level they had been for thousands of years.

It is now clear that communication, not race, is the driver of technology and advancement. And any race that becomes integrated in communication with others soon shares the same technologies and patterns of thought. It as we members of humanity share our voices together, everyone advances. As we remain isolated, we stagnate.

This causal link probably went unrecognized for so long because our level of communication is easily taken for granted. It transforms us seemingly effortlessly. We will explore this fact a little further with tomorrow’s post, where we examine the different milestones of communication that we have achieved, and the sudden and automatic spikes in technology that followed.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Range and Speed

The Greatest Force)

I wanted to start my analysis of the human voice by considering some of the physical aspects of it. Let us consider the case of speed and reach in the human body. If I were to ask what the fastest way for a man to propel something forward is, and to the greatest distance, you might think it would be by a kick, or a throw. Baseball pitchers can hurl a ball at 100 miles per hour, and cricket players have hurled a ball by hand 420 feet!

Let’s even suppose that we allow the person to use a simple tool, though no external source of power. Golfers have been known send a ball hundreds of yards, at speeds as high as 200 miles per hour!

But none of that would be the right answer. For the fastest, furthest cast, we do not look to the arms or the legs, we must look to the lungs. It is the human shout that is able to carry farther, and travel faster, than any other human-powered method. Under ideal conditions, some shouts have been reported to travel 10 miles, and the sound propagates at a speed of over 700 miles per hour. And what of the volume? When we shout, we physically vibrate the surrounding air particles in every direction, commanding the vibrations of over 100 billion cubic meters!

The human voice is therefore not only metaphorically powerful, but also physically magnificent as well. There is no other way that we can project farther, faster, and over a greater volume when using only the power of the body. But of course, this is not the only domain where the voice dominates. Tomorrow we will examine how being able to talk to one another and share ideas is the most important driver of all our technology and invention. I’ll see you then.

Posted on by Abe Austin

The Power of Your Voice- Trite but True

Disempowering Empowerment)

The expression, “the power of your voice,” is used so overused and misused, that I couldn’t help but cringe as I wrote it as the title to this series. Most of the time that we hear it the message is trite and vapid, meant to flatter the listener and assign them an unspecific power. All of that being said, there actually is some real truth to the expression, and it seems sinister that the phrase has been appropriated so as to hide the real depth of it.

I recently made a small post about how rare it is for a person to be their true, genuine self. More often we meet people who are empty puppets, parroting the ideas and beliefs of others. This same pattern continues with the use of our voice. Most of us use our speech to merely regurgitate words that are entirely unoriginal. In fact, the very people who tell us not to forget the power of our voice are usually the ones who are also telling us what to use it to say. We are expected to adopt their cause and priorities, then use the power of our voices to spread them. That isn’t empowering to the individual, only to the one giving orders.

Thus, most people don’t really have a voice; they are only an extension of someone else’s, a speaker to an activist’s microphone. Most people have not delved deep enough into themselves to find out who they really are. They haven’t found their true substance, and so they have nothing real to speak from. So yes, a person’s voice has power, but it isn’t their voice until they are a real person.

Over the next few days, I will try to delve a little deeper into the power of one’s voice, providing a clear basis for why I think the statement is actually true. I will also acknowledge biblical warnings of the danger in that power, and how we should be careful of it. I will begin tomorrow by examining the physical and literal power in the human voice. See you then!