Seeds of Change - Heiner Benking's Blog - quergeist.info: World without Boundaries ! - but a World without Greenland (on the map) ?    
 World without Boundaries ! - but a World without Greenland (on the map) ?
picture picture picture 7 Dec 2008 @ 20:15, by Heiner Benking

I was just reading about an Event in Greenland in July 2009. I was puzzled, when looking for hotels as this is a mayor event needing lots of attention and visitors, searching for locations of International Hotels, that on the worldmap of the Maritim Hotels, there is no Greenland on the map! So no bed- no lodging for the project!?
I have seen not only worldmaps with 2 Greenlands before, so I seldom see somethng new, but no map and twice a day yet, without this incredible large Greenland, can it disappear when the ice melts ? So here my 2nd surprise map:
Shoked I was when in my monthly journalists journal, I find another such map, a worldmap without Greenland ! It is done by Journalists without Borders ! an active, conscious organisation, so why should they confuse the world by thinking and displaying it instead of "without boundaries", "without certain islands" ??

My feeling it that this is ignorance and negligence: ... [more]

My feeling it that this is ignorance and negligence: I have seen the use of "inapproriate" distorted and partial "world-maps" before from many organisations, even Greenpeace is using it when mapping the oceans without oceans fairly presented on their maps. See citation from Elisabeth Mann-Borgese, "Mother of the Oceans".
My point is that not some of the "dubious, corrupt guys", or industrial, commercial or international organisations, even school atlasses, use inappropriate maps, are earth illiterate and map-analphabets. Even environmental or civil-society, justice or peace organisations with high reputation, such as Reporters without Boundaries above, use such inapproriate maps. The question is why?
I checked at the rsf-site and found they use plenty for their 2008 Reports for the World Freedom Index 2008. I was released but still puzzeled why nobody in charge in this organisations looks at this, I understand then the public and media is dumbed down, but reporters with such high reputation for investigating into justi
cs, boundaries, fidelity, truth, ... should they not question what they see?
I wonder what the elders from Greenland, and other more traditionally rooted people, say when they learn they are not represented on the worldmaps (any more?) This Greenland event in 2009 has in one section an event where "Spirit meets Science". I hope it will not be a strange encouter of aliens who have no common language, nore shared senses and visions/imaginations ... [link]
I myself look into maps and models since some time, but why do I seem to be soooo alone in this? Doesn't it matter what kind of worldmaps are behind our worldviews?
maybe see earlier entries in this blog: [link]

http://www.newciv.org/nl/newslog.php/_v396/__show_day/_w2008-11-05

[link]
and come back soon!

I meanwhile checked and luckily found that Reporters without boundaries or Greenpeace also use others maps in their reports, A WORLD WITH GREENLAND, but awfully distorted!!, tree times larger than Australia. No wonder why they eliminated it .
None of the maps I found from Reporers without Boundaries used equal area representation, a case of earth illiteracy and subject to map-illiteracy investigations .
I feel a standard for proportionality and fidelity is needed. So the Reporters might want to consider before they draw or delete boundaries, if they want to sharen and compare, positions, areas, overlaps, densigties and perspectives, as a basic for all the great and unselfish work they do when reporting about the world we still live in.
Please see Map-Analphabetism/Iliteracy and cultural footprints.


Maybe this citation, my favourity one, sounds not too strange (but it fits the topic of boundaries, editing, deleting, and searching for new maps and worlds...):
"Whoever imagines mental barriers which actually do not exist and then thinks them away, has understood the world.
As space is entrapped in geometry's network of lines, thought is caught in its (own) inherent laws.
Maps make the world comprehensible to us; we are still waiting for the star-maps of the spirit.
In the same way that ambling through fields we risk getting lost, the spirit negotiates its terrain."
Friedrich Rückert, Wisdom of the Brahmins


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