On the Radical Cartography site, there are a number of maps that visualize the supposed shape and size that the United States would take on if it were to be placed elsewhere on the globe. At first glance, I flipped through these images and wrote them off as a new exhibit in the Andy Warhol Museum.
However, a few minutes of observing the projections provided me with a fresh outlook on the concept of the map in general. For one thing, it is interesting to consider the idea that the United States may appear to embody a different shape if it were located elsewhere in the world. From a young age, Americans are taught to commit the map of our nation to memory, and also to memorize the names and locations of the fifty states and the history that accompanies them. If a first grader or a college graduate were to view the following map, would he or she even have the ability to identify the large red 'blob' at the top as the United States?
It is a bit unsettling to imagine that the homeland we cherish and think we understand geographically might not actually take on the shape we imagine. Our understanding of the lay of the United States depends completely on the explorers who long ago labeled the cardinal directions and set an arbitrary frame of reference which placed our nation in the northern and western hemispheres. Who are we to view our country this way, just because that's the way it's always been visualized? Is it more healthy than unnerving to take into consideration the fact that our country's borders are indeed arbitrary? Is it really beneficial to memorize the shapes of our states in elementary school when in reality, they might not actually look that way?
In short, I believe it is beneficial to view our country as a definite picture with real borders. There is great beauty in gathering the entire nation to agree on a projection of the United States and identify with its aesthetics. In a world and society where few ideas or trends remain constant, it provides comfort to agree on something so arbitrary as the shape of our homeland and the borders that surround it.
In this class, we have spent a great amount of time discussing what specific borders mean to people and how people tend to disagree on the meanings of these boundaries. However, it can be just as important to realize that our identity within a city, state, or country depends on the fact that we all accept the same trivial border and create a not-so-trivial culture within. Men and women will always fight wars and attempt to wipe out entire populations in order to expand and change borders to match their own desire. However, the arbitrary borders that are embraced by a group of people lead to strong communities, states, and nations. We stand together and better ourselves in order to represent a shape on a piece of paper, even if that sacred shape might not be what our nation actually looks like.
It is interesting to think of the United States in this way. Some of those shapes really do not look like the United States at all in the way that we have it in our minds. It is true that it was mapped out and the borders may not be as they actually appear, but I feel that it is in some sense a correct view of the actual U.S. This is a good point that we may not even be able to distinguish it in another form even though it is the same place and that the borders drawn may not be completely correct. As you said, it is nice that we can come together and agree on the shape as one thing that we all agree upon.
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