Punctuation cracks me up here–gives you an ominous Darth Vader tinge: “I find your lack of geographical interest-- disturbing.”
Hey, wait–are you saying you need to be an American to be a true moron?
It was a typo. But a good one.
Not at all, we’ve got lots - you want some? However the attitude of “I don’t need to know the most basic things about the world outside my borders because it doesn’t impinge on my daily life” said by educated people seems to be unique to one country, and inversely proportional to the power wielded by that country. Which is. disturbing.
I will concede that the late, learning-difficulties British reality TV star Jade Goody thought Tunisia and East Anglia were in some country called “abroad”, but that was a distinct exception. I’m happy further to be proved. wrong.
No, thank you. I was just wondering if you’d hit on the real definition of “American exceptionalism.”
I am an expert (in my own mind) at arm chair psychology. To me this is two sides to the same coin. You call what everyone does as a part of normal life recreational conversation. I do not call people out of the blue for pleasure. But I do have dozens of phone numbers in my phone. Because interacting with people is a normal aspect of everyday life. The fact that you do not talk to anyone unless its forced on you and you also see no reason to look beyond the closed in borders of your own self defined world are both symptoms of the problems you mentioned. Of course people are more complex than that but I can only go by what you have written since I don’t speak to you recreationally.
Beyond all that I think that having a vast knowledge of geography is just a hobby or an personal interest for most, not really needed in everyday life. Knowing the capital of East Bumfuqistan isn’t that important. There was a slight possibility that I was going to be able to go to Botswana recently. I had to look it up. I knew it was in Africa but didn’t remember exactly where. But it is hard to defend the idea that a basic general knowledge of where important events that effect everyone are occuring is not needed. In your everyday life its probably not important that you know the earth revolves around the sun or the the earth is round. But I wouldn’t want to be the champion of that ignorance.
13977, it gets a lot harder when I don’t have the outlines of the countries to guide me. Also, Australia, Russia, the US, and China are too damn big.
So long as you can answer “Where is Iraq” with “in the middle east” instead of something like “in South America”, then no one should give a shit unless you’re working in a field where being able to point out countries exact locations is a requirement.
I got up to 14000 but it gave me San Jose, Costa Rica twice, which is a cheap way to pile it up and get to the next level.
Once it took away country borders I was screwed.
Wow, that game is kind of tough! And obsessed with Italian cities, apparently.
These are separate things.
- Most people just absorb this stuff through their life through being conscious.
- You don’t. OK. That’s fine. We don’t all have the same life.
- You don’t see why it’s important, and consider it irrelevant.
- Your inability to do so [2] has nothing to do with whether it’s relevant [3].
If you find it hard, that’s fine. But why criticize those of us who just accumulate general knowledge through living? We don’t sit down and memorize maps and history books. We just spend decades talking to people and reading stuff that interests us, while keeping up on current affairs. It’s an organic process.
And if you consider it irrelevant, that’s fine; but why then present a choice of priorities as a natural inability? And why is that anybody else’s fault?
Like it or not, a person with some knowledge of “things” is more interesting to interact with. They have resources for conversation. They’re more interesting. That could be geography, history, politics, religion, science, or a hundred other subjects. But you get to have conversations about stuff involving opinions which - to a certain extent - requres a factual foundation.
I’m sorry that you talk to only two people in your life. That probaby sucks. But that’s not the rest of us. That doesn’t make the rest of us wrong for having an interest in the world around us, being accustomed to conversation with other people possessed of knowledge and opinion, and feeling that that enriches our lives and makes them more interesting.
Only until you get to the higher levels, where all the borders disappear. Then it seems develop a fascination for cities in countries ending in -stan, with occasional trips to central Canada, central Africa, and the US Midwest.
20,024 points, by the way. The last strike put me over 20k.
Just to clarify re the original point that inspired the thread: I don’t think everybody should be able to fill in an entire map in order to be allowed to vote.
I presumed that exposure to information & news about the Iraq war would mean you would have seen & remembered where it was. But maybe you’re right Jragon, some people’s minds might not work that way.
I do think that to vote, knowledge of countries your country is at war with is essential. What scares me, is people who point to Canada get to vote.
I’m 24, and I consider myself very well-educated and well-read (and modest too!). I read the Economist weekly and either the New York Times or Wall Street Journal every day. I follow world events as a hobby. I am also very good at spatial thinking and memory.
But I can’t say I’ve absorbed a lot of geography. I do know where most European and Middle-Eastern countries are, but not some of the smaller ones. I could find Iraq on a map, but probably not Jordan - or Georgia (near Ukraine, right?). And I certainly can’t locate any cities within these countries. I have no idea where Baghdad is in relation to Iraq’s borders. The same goes for Tehran in Iran, Kandahar in Afghanistan, etc. And forget about Africa - other than Egypt and South Africa, I have really no idea of what countries are where.
I don’t see why this would surprise anyone. I’m not a tactician - I don’t plan troop movements or something, nor am I shipping magnate that cares about the length of trade routes or whatever. The world events I care about have relatively little to do with geography. I have been following the uprising in Syria - but if you asked me to draw a map of Syria, I couldn’t. I have no idea what the country looks like. I don’t think this has any material effect on my understanding of what’s happening there.
Now, I will say that I never watch TV, and I do get the sense that maps and geographical graphics are more common on TV than in magazines or newspapers, so perhaps that is part of the reason.
Well, I don’t think you need to be qualified to work at Rand McNalley. But having a general sense of geography is kind of important to comprehending the articles you purport to read in the Economist and WSJ. For example, it’s proximity to Iraq, Israel, Lebenon and Saudi Arabia is significant in distinguishing it from “just some small country having a revolution”.
Also, “not having absorbed a lot of geograpy” is different from “geography is stupid, I don’t need to know it.”
A detailed knowledge of current events, a reasonably thorough knowledge of history, and a general idea of what region each nation is in and who its significant neighbors are, should suffice for voting and conversation.
Persons who have a spatial learning disability meaning that through daily reading of newspapers and viewing of maps that show the places referenced, after years, they still can’t quite figure out a world globe, should be given a pass on this. Same as persons who have a disability that keeps them from remembering correct spelling, despite reading more than a book a week for decades on end, get to use spell checkers.
I sort of skimmed the thread it’s possible I missed somebody making this point already, but I didn’t see it. You seem to be misunderstanding gracer’s point. When people say “you can’t even locate X on the map” or in this specific case “you can’t even locate Iraq on the map but you get to vote on Iraq war policy”, nobody means that were you able to, everything would be fine.
It’s more figurative than that. The implication is that locating a country on a map is the absolute minimum anyone could do* and they can’t even do that*. So learning geography, while a start, isn’t sufficient. So don’t put so much pressure on geography.
If you understand the significance of Sunni and Shia denominations in Iraq, the role Kurds play in Iraq’s social and political dynamics, have a firm understanding of the post invasion history, but can’t memorize maps… nobody is going to give you shit for it.
This is what I don’t get. If you know about that stuff, you’d probably also know about the Iran/Iraq war on the eastern border. The Kurdish no-fly enclave to the north of the country and how its border with Turkey, and Turkish anti-Kurdish history, relates to an uncomfortable relationship between Turkey and the west. You’d probably also know how about Iraq’s only access to the gulf through the area around Basra, and how in GWI Kuwait was attacked to the south west, and the UN action was led from US bases to the south in Saudi Arabia, and how in GWII volunteer fighters poured over the Jordanian border. So that’s already all the countries bordering Iraq apart from Syria. If you know the vague area of the world, even if you can’t pinpoint Iraq exactly, you have got a shape appearing already that will hint at where it is.
This is the absorption by being conscious that Candyman74 refers to. It’s not rote learning nor education - it’s simply being aware.
Sure, if you have a learning difficulty regarding spatial relationships you get a pass. But for everyone else, I’m not saying you have to know every single last detail of towns and the capitals, rainfall and major exports - but if you follow current affairs and don’t have a learning difficulty, not knowing the whereabouts of a country that your country is at war with, is fucking shocking.
Yup. Thanks 
It’s like saying “you shouldn’t get a say in foreign policy, you can’t even spell ‘Iraq’”. I doesn’t mean dyslexic people can’t vote. I just presumes that if you’ve ever seen a news article about the war you would know how to spell the name of the country.
(I see how that’s not a very sensitive thing to say. If the spatial awareness thing is the same I’ll try to rephrase in future.)
Also, it would stop major news organisations from fucking the fuck up.
We are all ignorant about something. Generally, those somethings are topics that do not particularly interest us. Someone professes disinterest in international politics and geography, and they are suddenly “disappointing” and “arrogant”, and perhaps shouldn’t be allowed to vote for people who decide our global policies.
Someone else admits ignorance about civil engineering, nobody suggests they’re arrogant and shouldn’t vote for state and local lawmakers who decide on road and bridge construction. I don’t know squat about farming, but I get to vote for people who decide farm policy, am I arrogant? Am I a fool for not spending the next few months learning about farming?
I think the ability to find a place on a map is rather overrated. There are other areas of knowledge that people are regularly ignorant of, that have more direct impact on our day to day lives.
…which is an attitude that only seems to be prevalent in the US.