Just look at this map of Earth.
Absorb it. Let this image slowly creep its way into your consciousness.
We've been lied to, and it is time to accept a new mental map of Earth.
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| The true scale, with elevations |
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| The true scale: countries labeled |
Our mental map of the world is a matter of politics and status. It establishes the relative position and sizes of continents. Maps get labeled. The "Gulf of America" implies that the Caribbean is ours, U.S. turf, and that Cuba, for example, is in our gulf. The "Gulf of Mexico" implies to an American that the gulf is an international space we share with other countries. Cuba is not an interloper in the Gulf of Mexico.
The sizes and positions of continents act similarly. Gerardus Mercator created the useful Mercator projection in 1569 and it has been in widespread use for 200 years. It made the lines of longitude parallel, which aided ship navigation. It became the standard view of the world in the U.S. when Earth is depicted on a flat map. We saw it in school. We didn't just "learn" it; we absorbed it and presumed it. How could we not? 
It was a comfortable view for Americans and Europeans. We weren't just on top; it made us bigger. Africa and the equatorial south got small.
The most powerful ideas are ones we absorb as assumption. It is hard to look at a Mercator projection and not absorb the idea that North America and Eurasia, are more significant to the world than Africa and South America. The fact that Greenland was bigger than Africa is a statement.
This shows where the distortion takes place:
Give yourself a gift. Learn something new. Stop reading here and bring your eyes back up to the top two images, and gaze on them for another moment and be open to resetting your map of the world. First impressions are hard to change, but give it a try.
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7 comments:
This is all so silly. There are very good technical reasons why the Mercator Projection became dominant. It’s useful in a way that this new projection is not.
Look at Oregon on this map. Which way do you have to go from Portland to get to Seattle? The answer is, very close to due North. On a Mercator Projection map, due North would be straight up. On this new map, due North can be anything from straight up to an angle of around 45 degrees off of vertical, depending on where you are on the map. It’s nothing close to straight up for the Portland to Seattle route.
The idea that the Mercator Projection was invented to ensure some sort of cultural dominance is nothing more than left-wing ideology looking for any grievance they can manufacture to support their political goals.
Besides, look at the size of Greenland on the Mercator Projection. Is there anyone dumb enough to look at that map and decide that Greenland is much more important than the United States?
This is a very revealing comment, and it speaks to the resentments of the Trump-adjacent grievance group: "The idea that the Mercator Projection was invented to ensure some sort of cultural dominance is nothing more than left-wing ideology looking for any grievance they can manufacture to support their political goals." It is an invented straw man. No one said it was invented it ensure cultural dominance." Indeed it was created to show navigation, and I wrote that. But MT did something strange, sad, and revealing. He decided it was invented to create grievance, and in so doing showed that he was looking for a reason to feel put upon. Inventing the attack. MT is intelligent and a very useful commenter on this blog. But he is an example of the "unreliable narrator" problem. He gives insight into Trump voters in the way they are just positive that they are picked on more than anyone else. Other people may have grievance, but none so much as prosperous, educated, professional White men--America's premier victim. MT is not being ironic here. He is not creating satire. I believe that, indeed, White men do in fact think they are the most picked upon and that informs their political attitudes generally. Believing is seeing, and MT (who I am confident has superb reading comprehension ability) misread and distorted plain English to fit the grievance. I am confident he did not intentionally lie. He saw want he expected/wanted to see. And that is the learning experience for readers.
Peter said:
We've been lied to, and it is time to accept a new mental map of Earth. ... Our mental map of the world is a matter of politics and status. ... It was a comfortable view for Americans and Europeans. We weren't just on top; it made us bigger. Africa and the equatorial south got small. ... The most powerful ideas are ones we absorb as assumption. It is hard to look at a Mercator projection and not absorb the idea that North America and Eurasia, are more significant to the world than Africa and South America. The fact that Greenland was bigger than Africa is a statement.
Look at these quotes from what Peter wrote. He is saying that the Mercator Projection contains a cultural message, something about domination by white Europeans. He says we were "lied to" by this projection.
The Mercator Projection "lies" about area. Areas closer to the poles look bigger, and areas close to the equator look smaller. This new projection "lies" in a different way. Directions are distorted as you go out towards the left and right edges of the map. Neither projection is actually "lying." There is a fundamental problem when you project a sphere onto a flat plane, and some kind of distortion is necessary.
Peter is doing his own "projection" here. He is projecting his beliefs about me onto me and coming up with a very inaccurate idea about my motivation. I did not write my original comment because I felt "put upon" as a white man. I wrote because I object to the injection of ideology of any sort into a purely technical matter like how to design a map.
I have a strong objection to the injection of ideology into the process of map design. In this particular case, ideologues pushing their idea of "equity," have decided that what the world needs is woke cartography.
I have no objection to this new map. If all that Peter had said was something like, "Here's an interesting new kind of map of the world that distorts areas less and gives us a better idea of the relative sizes of different places," I would've had no objection. But Peter had something more to say than that, something that verged into pushing woke equity ideology. I have a strong objection to that ideology.
No. The reason these maps are a topic du jour is, per The Guardian and other outlets, that the so-called Equal Earth projection has just recently been posited (publicized) as the more culturally just and less Eurocentric (to the extent those diverge) alternative to the venerable but now sinister Mercator. The politicized grievance dynamics are as MT described, and began with the indictment of the Mercator’s legacy. It’s another iteration of fashionable anti-colonialism or Third-Worldism (to the extent those diverge).
Addendum—the United Nations itself has just this month publicly adopted the Earth Equality and rejected the Mercator. No cultural politics there….
I love maps and cartography. Maps can display all kinds of useful information in an easy to understand format.
Peter apparently approves of the use of maps for woke virtue signaling. I do not approve of that use of maps.
By the way, as I have said repeatedly on these blog comments, I am not a Trump voter. I have never voted for him.
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