Deep Thought: We Need a Better Map
Created | Updated Oct 4, 2020
Deep Thought: We Need a Better Map
It is against Scottish law to produce a map of the UK which shows the Shetland Islands in a box.
QI, on Twitter
The BBC explains that there are exceptions, and why Shetland Islanders don't want to be 'in a box'. The funniest part of the BBC piece on the subject, at least to a North American, was this:
A spokesman for the company said: "The Shetland Islands are approximately 245km (152 miles) from the Scottish mainland, from the most northerly part of the Shetland Islands to John O' Groats, and 690km (428 miles) from the most southerly point of the Scottish and English border.
"It would be virtually impossible to print a paper map, with any usable detail, of this vast geography."
We know this as 'the Hawaii problem'. Its moral, as far as I'm concerned, is 'don't colonise', but your values may differ.
Yeah, yeah, I know the history of the Shetland Islands isn't the same as that of Hawaii. (Different set of pirates, is all.)
The point is, the idea of how you draw the map of their home matters to people from Shetland. As it should. The maps in our minds matter to us. They also define how we perceive the world, and what we think we can do in it. If you've ever been on the back roads of the United States, you may have heard the old witticism, 'You can't get there from here.' You may need a better map.
I am reporting...on the events that unfold in my life as a direct result of having adopted an alien set of interrelated ideas and procedures. In other words, the belief system I wanted to study swallowed me...
– Carlos Castaneda, The Eagle's Gift, 1981
You may have heard of Carlos Castaneda. The context in which you heard of him may determine where he belongs in your mental map of people and events. To the hippies of the 1960s, he was a 'far-out guru' who (they thought) encouraged them to take psychotropic drugs to 'expand their mind'. While it is true that Castaneda recorded his experiences with 'Mescalito', he was being supervised by shamans, and his purpose was not simply to go 'on a wild trip, man.'
If you're an anthropologist, your professors may have warned you about the dangers of 'going native'. As you can tell, this happened to Castaneda. The sorcerors saw him coming – sorry, they saw him coming. (You'll get that joke if you've ever read his books.) The anthropologists also probably complained about the popularity of Castaneda's books, which they have labelled fiction, although UCLA gave him a PhD, anyway. (It was the 60s.) Of course, the fact that it might be fiction never bothered me. I don't think of the Don Juan Matus corpus as anthropology, but as philosophy. As such, I find the books enlightening.
Marvin Harris was a famous and controversial anthropologist. The Washington Post called him 'a storm center in his field.' His book Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches is worth a read, even if you don't buy into all his grand theories.
Professor Harris really got mad at Carlos Castaneda. Harris wasn't in the least interested in 'alternate realities'. He viewed the Don Juan books as yet another example of the 'turn on, tune in, drop out' generation, and rejected all their works and pomps. He wrote:
Counter-culture makes claims that extend far beyond the supposed preservation of individual morality. Its advocates insist that superconsciousness can make the world into a more friendly and more habitable place; they see flight from objectivity as a politically effective way to achieve an equitable distribution of wealth, recycling of resources, abolition of impersonal bureaucracies, and the correction of other dehumanizing aspects of modern technocratic societies. These ills allegedly come from the bad ideas we have about status and work.
– Marvin Harris, 'Return of the Witch'
Harris no doubt considered this a devastating put-down. The counterculture no doubt replied, 'Yeah, that's true, what's your point?'
My point here isn't to defend Castaneda, who paid his money and made his choices, or put down Marvin Harris, who ditto. My point is to say, how you go about what you do depends very much on the map in your mind.
Or, as Einstein said,
Science without epistemology is – insofar as it is thinkable at all – primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system.
– Albert Einstein, quoted in Schilpp, Paul Arthur (ed.), 1949. Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist (The Library of Living Philosophers: Volume 7), Evanston, IL: The Library of Living Philosophers.
In other words, how you see the world depends a lot on the map in your mind.
We are all cartographers: we make our maps as we go along. The thing to remember, when working together, is that not everybody is operating with the same map. We need to synchronise our coordinates if we intend to orient properly. Otherwise, there will be a lot of useless shouting. Useless shouting is for Vogons: try to study your neighbour's maps before you jump to conclusions.
