LINES AND ARROWS
chapter 1 en 2. INITIATING AND RESPONSE #3
THE IMAGE: twice the trigram of Heaven. Heaven above and Heaven below.
THE IMAGE: twice the trigram of Earth. Earth above and Earth below.
Chapter 1, its meaning condensed into six strong lines, and chapter 2, symbolised by six receiving lines, contain the essence of the Book of Change. Understanding their interrelationship provides the key to what follows later in the book, the myriad potential changes life has in store. Everything starts with initiation, everything depends on response.
.. Confucius did not tire of explaining it in minute detail. According to him, Qian and Kun are the gate of I, which means that if one intends to understand the I Ching one should first understand Qian and Kun; then the gate of I opens for understanding the rest of the gua.
The Complete I Ching - Alfred Huang
Read as well:
White light falls on the grass. Some of this light, the red, is absorbed. The grass is drenched in red inside. The other part of the light, the green, is reflected back and reaches your eye. So you would swear the grass was green, were it not for the fact that this is precisely the colour, which was rejected, shown the door. The reflection creates a miraculous transformation. Object becomes subject. Grass is a red word.
In ancient narrative culture, there was the synaptic space between ear and mouth, between narrators and listeners. The narrator presents, the listener creates. And what about the written story? The writer writes and when the story is finished, he hands it over, and the reader reads. Who is the real creator of the story?
Specifically, the meaning of a piece of writing is not something that can be guaranteed a priori by the authentic character or voice of the person who is said to have written it. Instead, meaning transpires in and from the experience of reading. It is through that process that readers discover (or better, โfabricateโ) what they assume the author had wanted to say.
AI Signals The Death Of The Author - David J. Gunkel
What could a human being possibly do, wandering the world, full of danger and without limitations? What was he doing, when the worst thing that could happen to him was getting lost? The life of our ancestors was uncertain, a never-resting stream of change, whose purpose was an enigma. That reality is the one thing that did not change until our time.
In the meantime, people started drawing maps, trying to simplify the multiplicity and chaos, to tame the reality of incessant change. Maps show at a glance how things are. Or rather, they show a reality as we wish it to be, simple and defined, two-dimensional and uncluttered.
Once a map is drawn and coloured, it changes from narrative to narrator. A map with north at the top tells that north is up. And when that map is seen every day - in the classroom, in the atlas, in the newspaper, on TV - there is no doubt: up is north. Whereas, if you are outside in the afternoon, the sun, high in the sky, is really south.
The familiar Europe map, including the far north.
North. Old English norรฐ- (in compounds) โnorthern, lying to the northโ (adj.); norรฐ (adv.) โnorthwards, to the north, in the north;โ from Proto-Germanic *nurtha- (source also of Old Norse norรฐr, Old Saxon north, Old Frisian north, Middle Dutch nort, Dutch noord, German nord), which is probably an IE word, but of uncertain origin. It might be ultimately from PIE *ner- (1) โleft,โ also โbelowโ (source also of Sanskrit narakah โhell,โ Greek neretos โdeeper, lower down,โ enerthen โfrom beneath,โ Oscan-Umbrian nertrak โleftโ), as north is to the left when one faces the rising sun. The same notion apparently underlies Old Irish tuath โleft; northern;โ Arabic shamal โleft hand; north.โ Or perhaps the notion is that the sun is at its โlowestโ point when in the north.
etymonline.com
So the orientation of this map is north.
Orientation(n.) 1832, โarrangement (of an object) to face east or any other specified direction,โ noun of action from orient (v.).
There were once maps that had the east at their top. The Orient of the Holy Land and Jerusalem.
On this map, the water of the great Rhine river flows upwards from the green-coloured Switzerland, through the yellow Germany, to flow into the sea at the pink Netherlands. Strange, that itโs water flowing upwards?
A quarter-turn and the map is literally oriented. Rhine water can flow calmly down, from the snow-capped Alpine peaks, into the delta of the Low Countries. The Netherlands as the Bangladesh of Europe. A ฮ, delta, as conceived by the Greeks, like that of the Brahmaputra, Rhone or Mississippi.
Turn a quarter turn and the story of the map turns a full turn. This part of the world suddenly shows itself in its natural context. Besides the changed orientation, the absence of the illusory lines of national borders and the always alienating pastel colours certainly helps.
What I want to say: the direct observation and the perceived reality is 1, the recording of it on map is 2. If 2 is shown and seen often enough, it is soon worn for reality, as the only reality.
Once again the map of Europe, nations delineated with sharp lines and brightly coloured in. There is no escape, this is Europe, an old painting full of craquelรฉ. A vase broken and glued back together.
The standard script of the map still principally works with the division of state territories as a base. Because of its pervasive use in media, academia, politics, and education, the impact of this particular worldview is hard to overstate. The repetitive use of only this script has created what geographer and border scholar Boggs has called a 'cartohypnosis', in which the map, as a consciously designed, artificial model of reality, is subconsciously internalized with such a high degree of suggestibility that it is believed to be the reality. This internalization of the fabrication of the world, this theater, is also much helped by the significantly increased mathematical precision and scientificย complexity, which has given the Atlas an air of objectivity and neutrality.
Free the Map - Henk van Houtum
But then this miraculous map. The same continent, river basins and watersheds. Gone are the contrived, frenetic national boundary lines.
Let's turn it upside down right away, so it is facing south. Facing the sun is nice. I am so used to the old map image that looking at the British Isles makes me a bit light-headed.
As we slowly unravel the narrative quality of the map, we come to a mapping of a different order, linked to current politics. The map below is used by Frontex, the European body that manages its outer border, including the so-called illegal immigration. These or similar maps pass by us daily. The arrows represent those fleeing from danger, but the map transforms them from victims to the danger itself. The thickness of the arrows and their red colour are reminiscent of war and invasion.
Should the red colour be replaced by baby blue, the alarming nature of the card weakens considerably.
And then the thickness of the arrows more in proportion.
And the relativisation continues as circles take the place of pinching arrows.
And what happens when the abstraction of symbols is abandoned and the map or infographic shows what it is really about: people?
The original Frontex map suggests, through thick red arrows, invasive wild hordes. How many - unofficial, document-less - immigrants are we actually talking about? 125,000 out of a European population of 850 million. That in no way justifies the thick, threatening arrows.
This infographic tells a story that is more in proportion. But the essence of the map is also present in this one unabated: simplification and never able to represent the whole complex reality.
As cartographer Mark Monmonier said in his well-known book How to lie with maps: โNot only is it easy to lie with maps, it's essential. To portray meaningful relationships for a complex, three-dimensional world on a flat sheet of paper or a video screen, a map must distort reality. [...]To avoid hiding critical information in a fog of detail, the map must offer a selective, incomplete view of reality. There's no escape from the cartographic paradox: to present a useful and truthful picture, an accurate map must tell white lies.โ Or as geographer John Rennie Short put it: โAll maps, in one sense are lies since they involve a massive partial (mis) representation of the solid world on a smaller object. [...] Maps do show us the lie of the land, in the multiple sense of the word 'lie'โ A map should thus be seen as a visual proposition, a projection of how the maker sees the world and, by extension, how the maker wants you to see it. Hence out of honesty and openness, just like any text or story of the world, a map should have an author. We should no longer hide the political, commercial, or personal interests, stakes, and perspectives under the veil of geometric objectivity or standards but rather be open and honest of the selective, biased, and value-loaden take on the world the map maker wishes to represent and convey.
Free the Map - Henk van Houtum
To be continued ...