"It came as a surprise to me after over 20 years of seeing "normal" world maps to come across an upside down one. The most surprising thing was that I found it surprising. It is completely artificial that we have North at the top of a map.
The convention came a few centuries ago when Northern hemisphere, European navigators started using the North star and the magnetic compass. Before that, the top of the map was to the East which is where the word orientation comes from. "
(c) www.ODTmaps.com (NOTE: I was originally shamelessly stealing this image, too - sorry to the Bob Abrams people!)
by Tom Peterson
"I dreamed the other night that all the maps in the world had been turned upside down. Library atlases, roadmaps of Cincinnati, wall-sized maps in the war rooms of the great nations, even antique maps with such inscriptions as "Here be Dragons" were flipped over. What had been north was now south, east was west. Like a glob of melting vanilla ice cream, Antarctica now capped schoolroom globes.
In my dream, a cloud of anxieties closed around me. The United States was now at the bottom. Would we have to stand upside-down, causing the blood to rush to our heads? Would we need suction-cup shoes to stay on the planet, and would autumn leaves fall up? No, I remembered, an apple once bopped Newton on the head - no need to worry about these things.
Other things troubled me more. Now that we're at the bottom, would our resources and labor be exploited by the new top? Would African, Asian, and Latin American nations structure world trade to their advantage?
Would my neighbors and I have two-dollars-a-day seasonal jobs on peach and strawberry plantations? Would the women and children work from dusk to dawn to scratch survival from the earth of California and Virginia? Would the fruit we picked be shipped from New Orleans and New York for children in Thailand and Ethiopia to hurriedly eat with their cereal so they wouldn't miss the school bus? Would our children, then, spend the morning, not in school, but fetching water two miles away and the afternoon gathering wood for heating and cooking? Would a small ruling class in this country send their daughters and sons to universities in Cairo and Buenos Aires?
Would our economy be dependant upon the goodwill and whims of, say, Brazil? Would Brazil send war planes and guns to Washington, D.C. to assure our willingness to pick apples and tobacco for export while our children went hungry? Would Brazil and Vietnam fight their wars with our sons in our country? Would we consider revolution?
If we did revolt, would the Philippino government plot to put their favorite U.S. general in power, and then uphold him with military aid?
Would we work in sweatshops manufacturing radios for the Chinese? Would our oil be shipped in tankers to Southeast Asia to run their cars, air-conditioning and microwave ovens while most of our towns didnąt even have electricity?
Would top of the world religious leaders call us stubborn pagans upon whom God's judgement had fallen, causing our misery? Would they proclaim from opulent pulpits that if we simply turned to God, our needs would be met?
In my dream, I saw child crying in Calcutta. Her parents wouldn't buy her any more video games until her birthday. I saw her mother drive to the supermarket and load her cart with frozen and junk food, vegetables, cheese, meat, and women's magazines.
I also saw a mother in Houston baking bread in an earthen oven. She had been crying because there were no more beans for her family. One of her children listlessly watched her. He was a blond boy, about six years old. He slowly turned his empty, haunting gaze toward me.
At that point I awoke with a gasp. I saw I was in my own bed, in my own house. It was just a bad dream. I drifted back to sleep, thinking, "It's all right, I'm still on top.
Thank God!"
1 comment:
They sell these maps at the 10,000 Villages in Ottawa. Sadly, they are ridiculously expensive. You could certainly raise the egos of a few Montevideans...
That story reminds me of a reading for school on the development elite (the compound-living, SUV driving western "experts"). The author argued that these people unknowingly exacerbated the inequalities that led to the Rwandan Genocide.
He says: "This is the segment of a thousand or so foreigners and maybe as many nationals who own almost all the beautiful houses, primarily in the capital, but also scattered throughout the countryside; who buy up most of the land from destitute farmers; who travel abroad and share the French culture. Most of these people work for the development enterprise and derive their wealth from it. Their salaries are hundreds of times higher than the incomes of farmers."
Then the punchline: "How would we react if such inequalities existed in our own society?"
Not so poetic, but it sure gave me pause for thought. I pray I never become that person.
Post a Comment