An Ecology of MInd (10 page)

Dr. Pearson dimmed the lights in the lecture hall slightly and turned on the digital projector with a remote. He pulled a small laser pointer out of his
pocket. "This is your standard map of the world that you have seen in classrooms, in books, or projected in television news programs. You may not have
thought about it before, but if you look at it, there is an obvious Eurocentric bias to the map of the world as shown. Europe is at the centre of the map.
The whole map implies that Europe is the centre of the world. I'm willing to concede that for historical reasons and the fact we are, many of us, of
European descent, this is an understandable and forgivable bias. After all, somewhere has to be in the middle."

"However, there is a much less obvious bias to this map of the world. Look at Greenland and compare it to Africa. They have a different outline but are
basically of similar size. Do you agree?" There were several nods around the class. "Stupid question right, just look at the map, they are obviously a
similar size. Actually, they are not. Africa is fourteen times bigger than Greenland. Thinking something is fourteen times larger than it is, is not a
minor discrepancy. It is also not just Greenland that is incorrect. It is the entire map. The distortion is greater the farther you are from the equator.
Greenland is merely an easy visual reference for comparison. You may be thinking, "That can't be correct. Maps don't lie.""

"I am not suggesting some strange worldwide conspiracy. This map of the world that you are so familiar with is a flat, two-dimensional representation of a
sphere. To see a far more accurate representation of the world, look at a globe. We all know that the world is round. Unfortunately, globes don't fit into
books well. If you look at this map of the world on the screen, you see that the vertical lines representing longitude are parallel, but in reality, they
converge at the north and south poles to a single point."

"Most flat maps of the world are made using what's called a Mercator projection. It portrays the longitude lines as parallel and in so doing, distorts
things. The farther you are from the equator, the more it is enlarged. Flat maps like this also usually crop off Antarctica and have the equator located
about sixty percent down the page. The overall effect is to make the northern hemisphere appear much larger than it actually is. It is most easily
recognized with Greenland, but it also makes Europe; the United States, Canada and other places farther from the equator appear larger than they really
are. This gives an unconscious bias with respect to their importance. Don't take my word for it. Look at a globe and compare."

"So for most of you anyway, your image of the geography of the world has not matched the reality."

"Most of you were provided with, or shown a map at some time in your life and told, "This is a map of the world." It would have probably been by a parent,
a teacher, or it could have been something you saw on television. You now had a mental construct and used this construct in your future dealings with the
world."

"As a quick aside, the information was given to you by other people, and you did not question it. Your assumption was that it was correct since it came
from people of authority. How much of the information that you have, or use, in your understanding of the world, is directly learned or tested by you
personally? Very little."

"The vast majority of information that people have and use in their dealing with the world is given to them by other people. It might be from books,
television, or some other medium, but it came from some other person. This is overall a good thing. You can learn things faster and can learn about things
you have no direct dealings with. It also means, however, that incorrect information can persist within society and people’s belief systems almost
indefinitely when you consider our earlier discussion on mental constructs and the brain ignoring contradictions."

"Let’s go back to our map of the world example. You have all seen globes. You have all seen the lines on the globe that represent longitude and latitude,
and you have all seen on a globe how the longitude lines converge at the poles to a single point. Even knowing this though, you already were familiar with
a version of how the world looked on a flat map, and you did not question it."

"You did not notice that the land masses like Greenland look different on a globe than a map. Not even large differences made you notice." You all have
seen that the longitude lines on a flat map are parallel, but you did not even question the implications of this inaccuracy when compared to information
you already had. This is everything that we discussed earlier. This is another example of a barrier distorting your own personal reality."

"If you personally are this wrong about something as simple and commonplace as the basic geography of our world, what else are you blind to? What other
distortions of reality do you have?"

"But that is enough about geography for now. Dr. Wales and the History department are sponsoring this seminar, so I should include some more history to
keep him happy."

"I mentioned the idea of Eurocentric bias in how the flat map was drawn. I want to give you a couple of history examples to show you how Western European
centric most of your understanding of the history of the world is."

"Can anyone tell me when the Roman Empire ended?" A couple of hands went up. "Yes, the man in the blue checkered shirt over here."

"I think it was around 450 A.D.," said the student.

"One person says it was around 450 A.D.. Does anyone else have a different answer?" Nobody seemed to. "So consensus is that the Roman Empire ended about
450 A.D. then?" There were no objections. "You are close, well done. The last Western Roman Emperor was forced to abdicate in the year 476 A.D., and that
was the end of the Western Roman Empire. Notice that in both cases I said "Western." "

“The general understanding of most people is that the Roman Empire ended then but there is a lot more to it. From the years 200 A.D. to 280 A.D., there
were twenty-nine different Roman Emperors. Only one of them died of natural causes. Then Emperor Diocletian took power and decided that the Roman Empire
was too large to be governed by a single man. So what he did is divide it in two. He took the Eastern half which was wealthier and had a larger population
to rule ... I'll say that again for emphasis, "the Eastern half which was wealthier and had a larger population", and gave the Western half to his friend
Maximian to rule."

“The rough line that divided the Roman Empire still marks the border between Eastern and Western Europe today. You now had the Roman and Byzantine halves
of the empire that were in theory, one single entity, but divided for administrative purposes. The Byzantine half, ruled from the city of Constantinople
continued long after the fall of Rome itself. The Eastern half of the empire ended much later than the Western half. First, it was looted by Christians
during the 4th Crusade who found it easier to loot a strange Christian empire than to finish the trek to Jerusalem and attack the Muslims. Later, in the
year 1453 A.D., Constantinople fell for the final time to the Ottomans. So the last part of the Roman Empire ended only thirty-nine years before Columbus
discovered America."

"For almost a thousand years after Rome fell, the Eastern half of the Roman Empire continued and shielded Western Europe from invasion by the Muslims.
Remember the five Patriarchs of Christianity? One of them was based in Constantinople. The portion of the Christian church which was ruled from
Constantinople did not recognize the Pope's self-appointed supreme power to speak for the Christian faith. So Christianity split into Catholic and Orthodox
branches. There are other branches that exist still today.

Remember one of the Patriarchs was located in Alexandria in Egypt. In Egypt, there were, and still are the Coptic Christians. Some Coptic congregations are
in North America and other places around the world. Their Christian beliefs were based on the teachings of St. Mark, as the Catholic Church was founded by
St. Peter. However, let's get back to Constantinople."

“Even though Constantinople and the Patriarch fell to Muslim conquest; the Orthodox faith still continues as the Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox
religions. Both Greece and Russia are countries located within modern-day Eastern Europe."

"When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople, they renamed the city Istanbul which exists today as the capital of Turkey."

"The discrepancy between what we are taught in the West and reality is that while the part of the Roman Empire ruled from Rome did fall in 476 A.D., the
larger portion of it continued. Both, it and its religions tend to be forgotten and largely ignored in the version of history taught in the West."

"Another example of a Western European bias altering reality in viewing world history is the Mongols. Most Westerners' knowledge of the Mongols is that
they were a barbarian horde that came out of the East and briefly threatened civilization in the West. They may also know the name Genghis Khan as being
the leader of the Mongols."

"Genghis Khan was born in either 1162 or 1155 depending on the researcher you consult. His leadership started the Mongols on the way to the creation of the
largest continuous empire in world history. It was larger than that of Alexander the Great or of the Roman Empire which Western history focuses on, to the
exclusion of most of the rest of the world."

“The Mongols greatly valued knowledge and gathered and spread improvements throughout their empire in a number of areas, including medicine and astronomy.
They were responsible for things like the concept of diplomatic immunity and set up publicly funded schools in many areas."

“Their armies could advance at a rate of fifty miles a day and keep up that pace for weeks at a time. Not even the Blitzkrieg or "Lightning War" of the
Germans during World War II, using motorized vehicles, has come close to matching this."

“The Western adventurer Marco Polo wrote glorious accounts of the ruler Kublai Khan and his amazing empire. Kublai Khan was the grandson of Genghis Khan.
The Forbidden City in Beijing, the home of the Chinese Emperor, was built by the Mongols to keep themselves separate from those they ruled."

“The Mongol Empire later fragmented but portions of it continued for a long time. The final ruler who was a direct descendent of Genghis Khan was the last
Emir of Bukhara, who ruled until the year 1920 in part of what is now Uzbekistan."

“The Mongols were in the process of easily conquering Europe when the general in command of the conquest received word that the Great Khan had died. At
that time, it was not Genghis Khan but instead, one of his sons."

"All major persons of the Mongol empire were required to return to the select the next Khan. They never returned to finish conquering Europe because the
Mongols did not feel that it had anything worth bothering with. This Empire is reduced in the minds of most Westerners to the image of a relatively
insignificant group of smelly barbarians who once threatened Western Europe."

"Once you start to look beyond the Western centric bias of the world and world history you will be amazed at how many culturally and historically rich
other areas, there are in the world."

"The West having an altered and biased view of history is not unique, but merely an example. China, for example, has a long history of keeping itself
separate and viewing the rest of the world as barbarians. The Western one is merely the one that most of you in this particular audience has been
indoctrinated with."

“Distorted mental constructs can result from biases of all sorts, regional, national, ethnic, racial, economic and many more."

"Let's stop for another fifteen-minute break. While on break, I want you to consider the classic question of whether history is shaped by great men and
women or is it shaped by general political and cultural trends within the population. We'll see what you think when we come back.

THE PROBE WAS QUITE CONTENT in the middle of the sun. Far from being damaged, it was absorbing energy at a very high rate, lots and lots of energy.

It also was busy fabricating things from the atoms around it. It had made some large additions to itself and had also created six duplicates of its
original, smaller self. Each of the new small probes was on the way to one of the six planets in the star system. They would begin their tasks once they
got there.