Strange Maps comes with another fabulous map, this one of “US States Renamed For Countries With Similar GDPs.” It got me thinking on how many of the realities that shape our lives, particularly large-scale ones, are often difficult to grasp because some phenomena just have have too many strands, or are simply too abstract for conscious recognition. We can intellectualize them, and might have some vague sense we are affected by them, but the what of it– that’s the hard part.
To use a simple example, imagine trying to imagine “the world” without ever having seen a globe. Pretty empty, huh? Sure, there all these things a globe can’t tell us, but at least it gives us some basic spatial sensibility, an over here and over there.
I like the map above because it takes something about which I have some sense, and uses that sense as a template to make sense out of something else. The importance of this templating cannot be underestimated because its an important aspect of how we learn. So much of knowledge starts with what we already possess, and when looking at this map I have visceral responses to the relationships it reveals. I mean, I’m not like jumping up and down on the couch, but I definitely had a few “OMG, Canada?” moments. This is what we mean when we say something “hits home.”
A while back, The Daily Mail ran an article featuring cartograms of different kinds of economic and political realities. Take this one on Military Spending:
In general the map above is unsurprising, but, again, it’s the relations that are compelling. For even as the northern hemispheres exceed the southern in spending…
We also know that the north seldom suffers the direct negative consequences of that spending. Countries that had virtually disappeared as spenders reappear in statistics about death and dying– let’s call it negative consumption.
This is what makes something like “The Peace Index” so compelling. Recently put out by Vision of Humanity, it accounts for local and global policy when assessing various countries relationships to war and death. As OneWorld reports, Iraq, Sudan, and Israel fall at the bottom, while the U.S. and Iran share equally low scores:
To end, perversely, let’s add another cartogram to our repertoire: it seems that the United States is the least peaceful country featuring a great amount of toys. But they’re all coming from somewhere, and that too might have consequencess…
<– Toy Imports
Toy Exports –>
related post: “Terraforming, v.1“
orthogonal post from Statastic:
“President Bush’s 2008 budget hit the Hill yesterday to a frosty reception (so much for global warming). The budget is like having an accountant hold a mirror up to American society, and that society is simultaneously warlike and childish.”
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