Way back long ago I read a news story about how in his private office Khrushchev (Russian Leader during Cold War) had a world map with the North Pole at the bottom, south at the top. The gist of the story was how that simple visual trick added totally new dimensions to assessing geopolitical realities and strategies. My young mind was fascinated by the notion and it was never completely forgotten.
Just now looking at this video reminded me of that, and the fact that such a simple shift in our ‘points of reference’ can make a big difference in our outlook.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zJ9FnQXmJI
Dreksler Astral - Published on Jun 4, 2017
It is interesting how our view of things alters and limits how we think.
Any talk of ‘perspective’ always makes me think of the greatest movie ever made. In Dead Poet’s Society, Mr. Keating makes the students stand on his desk to get a view of the room from an angle from which they’ve likely never seen it.
I often wonder how society would have evolved if we had been able to fly and view the landscape from a birds eye-view. I highly doubt that eagles with our brains and opposable thumbs would have divided the planet into the areas we have. I don’t know how different and in exactly what ways it would be different, but it seems like there would have to be some fundamental differences in political and personal boundaries.
When you walk into the main visitor’s center for Denali National Park, you can’t miss the giant display on the wall of the globe centered on the north pole. Arrows cross over it showing bird migrations, completely ignoring our geopolitical boundaries. It shifts you from feeling like you’ve traveled “way up north” to some remote location to being at the center of the world.
