a worldly education

there is a lot of night life at the pub. plenty of people sneak in past sunset and spend entire nights here, socializing and sipping away at their preferred poisons. I miss out on that, mostly, as my pub moments are in the mornings. luckily ~bartender and the bar-minions not only mix drinks but make a mean macchiato, too. it's just strong, black coffee for me today. jolts me awake and gets me ready for a day of thinking.

lilDude was complaining about geography class. he doesn't like it. "there's so much to remember!" you know, coordinates, countries, capitals, and whatnot. which nation borders which others, and what stretch of water gets called what—and according to who. meanwhile, here I am batting .990 at Where In The World because there aren't enough tiny island nations left to properly confuse me.

gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/witw.cgi/

Guess 1. Upper Slobbovia • 0 km • 🎉 • 100 %

Congratulations! You correctly picked Upper Slobbovia!

it got me thinking about why I like geography so much, or at least, why I'm so good at it. if I recall correctly, I didn't actually like my geography classes, or my history classes either. both seemed unengaging and dry, and yes, mostly consisted of memorizing information that didn't seem relevant or interesting, like which generals fought in which war and reduced which French province to smoking, barren rubble. but when I got home from bombing both classes, I would bide away evenings and weekends browsing through our set of junior encyclopedias, looking up—what else?—maps. learning where things are, what or who comes from where, what things are closer to others.

these were maps from the 70s, and I guess one thing that attracted me was their design. I've always liked the design aesthetics from the 60s and 70s, and maybe that appreciation for design helped me enjoy what I failed to appreciate at school. sure, it was probably also the fact that I was learning what *I* wanted to learn. as a result, whenever we played Trivial Pursuit, I went for the blue pie first, and usually got it.

perhaps another source of inspiration was a certain cosmopolitan streak in my upbringing, in which my parents encouraged me to learn about the world and different cultures. mom would cook dishes from different cuisines—Chinese, Iranian, Mexican, Indian, Acadian. we were good with languages and picked up random phrasebooks for the fun of it; I remember learning Russian and Spanish. and of course, mom and dad came from different cultures and spoke different languages themselves; I attended both French and English schools. many of our friends were from different cultures: Japanese, Iranian, Arabic, and Vietnamese, having lived in places like the Philippines, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea. the Bahá'í teaching "let your vision be world-embracing" was a reality in our household.

maybe all of this is simply an illustration of how education happens in different ways, and continues life-long, both inside and outside of schools. of course, the curricula set by your country will have certain things to say about each subject. for me, it was all about glorifying the European settlers—the French 'coureurs de bois' who tamed the mighty Canadian wilderness and the British soldiers who imposed order—while deftly relegating the First Nations of North America to historical footnotes, reminders of a quaint past before Confederation.

I like to think that little me was trying to escape this narrow, constricting narrative, hiding in my books to try and make my own sense of things. or I was just bored, like lilDude often says he is. maybe both. but one thing is sure: as humans, remembering things is what we do. memorizing the capitals of all 50 states is within our capacity; most often it's the will, the volition, that makes the difference. will you ever need all that information in your head? debatable, just like knowing pi to 100 decimal places. but wanting to do it is what makes the difference.

they say that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. likewise, you can lead a child to knowledge, but you can't make them think. I'll spare you the dive into the metaphor of freely drinking deep from the oceans of knowledge. in the meantime, i'll be finishing my coffee.

detritus

Your post came right in the nick of time for me.

Honestly, it's been a while since I have been so engaged in history and cultures, though the interest in MAPS and capitals is quite recent!

History class in school, was, as we all know, designed so that we dread knowledge, so that we find it pointless and very difficult to attain. In my case, when I was in school I always wondered why "universal history" class taught the history of 17th century Europe or so, and nothing else.

Turns out 17th century Europe is the universe.

Would you believe me if I told you a MAGA hat made me interested in learning as much as I can abou all of the world's cultures?

It's weird, I never actually thought I would be interested in this. I used to seek the technical knowledge of mathematics, of programming, and of physics.

It was in a site mostly devoted to this kind of stuff that I found a western-supremacist post that disregarded all the world and put """The West""" on a big pedestal. This is the maga hat I mentioned above, case you missed that.

That brought me into a spiral of learning the history of the world, stacking books on india, central asia, the ill-called middle east, china, russia, southeast asia, tibet...

I'm not yet ready to add Africa and the Americas. I have plenty, more than plenty, on my plate for the moment.

And that's when I decided to print all the maps.

Right now the maps caught some humidity and the chickens shat on them so I have to print them again.....

Next I am planning to glue them to a notebook, but that's the stuff for a different post....

The same maga-hat commentary also had another side effect... Now I see """The West""" as pretty much the source of all evil in the world. Not a day goes by that I do not point out a consequence of the "western" worldview which has come down to the awful mess that we have on our hands...

Sometimes I consider I am too lopsided against "the west"

But then I look at the world and it wears off....

~bartender, I would like to have a taste of that macchiato, too.

As for capitals.... it's kind of silly, you know?

My wife was watching one of those videos where some dude walks up to a guy and offers him money if he can correctly answer a bunch of capitals.

He asked him the capitals of 4 european countries. And then India.

FAR too easy, even the victim said that.

Anwyay, I went on to take it as a challenge, and I started researching, you know, just in case some guy walks up to me on the street and offers me money for answering capitals, you never know (I would have to get out of home first, so maybe I'm not really thinking this through). I started with central asia, my current historical obsession. What are the capitals of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Khazajstan?

Another thought assaulted me today.

I am here, on a remote corner of the world, in a rural area where books might as well be banned, and I am learning so much about the wide world out there.

I wish I get the chance to travel someday.

So, my experience turns out to be the exact opposite of yours.

I lived on a big city, yes, but I seldom got any contact with people from other countries. Even when I did, their othercountriness wasn't on the foreground, they just spoke a slightly broken spanish sometimes.

I got interested in the world by the most unlikely kind of person to push me in that direction. But so effective!

I never got to travel, in fact, I live under a literal (metaphorical) rock.

God bless the internet.

And bless you too, ~dragfyre, for putting up with my diatribe.

~bartender, two more macchiatos, please.