Anticipating the brain drain.

     The time of spring break is upon us so, in order to keep a record of my thoughts before they may or may not disappear, I figure I'll do some writing now.

     The first order of business is settling on a KYHOI or Knock Your Head Off Idea. I'm not making anything final, but this is what I have so far.

Maps impose boundaries and these boundaries are arbitrary.

Now, to fit in with the general theme of the project, this will have to apply to how we are becoming more connected and also, at the same time, less connected. This, I think, is an achievable goal.

     To sort of test the waters, I'm going to do a little thought experiment. (Also, this may be a direction I take my little clip in.) So first off, I want you, the reader, to think of, say the United States. More likely than not, what comes to mind is this...

Now, this is all well and good, but what does this map actually tell you? I mean really? What basis does this have in actual reality? For a bit of fun, lets put a bit of topography on this map.

Notice still that the borders are displayed. Now I ask you, why are the borders where they are? Granted, the Mississippi River provides a bit of a boundary, but what about the west? Who decided where the Rockies were going to be divided? Take Wyoming for example, why on earth is is square? I'll tell you why. It was arbitrarily decided to be that way.



    Now I want to go a bit farther back in history to, say, the Classical Period. Specifically, let's look at the Roman conquest of Spain. Now, aside from the Punic War, which is important, but not entirely relevant, let us look at the conquest as a whole. This wasn't a steady march across the entire peninsula slowly conquering individuals. NO. The Romans simply occupied all of the coastal regions and then simply claimed the entirety of the peninsula. The Spanish living in the interior more than likely never even heard of Romans, much less seen them, but they were part of Roman Spain. Of course, this is only early history. As Rome expanded and acquired a larger bureaucracy, control of the interior increased, but even then, what was determined to be Spain only existed for administrative reasons. In fact, Spain was divided down the middle to make Nearer and Further Spain called such because they were Nearer and Further from Rome. The point is, there was a LOT of territory that was mapped as Rome, but the truth is, most of this was uninhabited or simply not administered space.

     Why is this important? Well, as western and other imperial powers became powerful enough to begin controlling other peoples, the trend continued. Large swaths of often unexplored territory were 'colonized', and the borders that were drawn up were often based on the mathematics of the maps of the colonizers. Why is this bad? It separated people who had been close and joined people who hated each other. Take Iraq as an example. The borders of Iraq join Kurds and Arabs, Sunni and Shia, and none of them particularly like each other. The British simply came in and set up their boundaries. What did that do? Take a look at the world today. Where is the turmoil in the world right now? That's right.

     So, borders separate us and they also join us together - even if we don't want to be joined together. The other important thing is, those borders are completely arbitrary. I want you to think about your home town. What separates you from the people next door? What makes you different? Now expand that. What is different about the people on the next street? How about in the next town over? Sure there is distance, but what is distance in the age of communication? The only thing separating you from the rest of humanity is a mindset. That mindset is a border, and it is in part created by maps. Think about maps made in the middle ages. Here there be monsters. People simply didn't know what was out there and so it must obviously be monstrous. This day in age, we have a pretty good understanding of what the world looks like, but we ourselves don't KNOW. So, everywhere there are monsters -> and we don't even think about it.

     Here I could advocate the closing of borders, I've certainly made a case for it, but I don't know if it really is the right thing to do -> or even if its my place to say in the first place. What I do know, is that maps are a tool of the mind, and as a tool, its influence affects us.