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Dread Knot · 05-23-14, 08:55 AM

Maybe the old Parker Brothers world conquest game, Risk is to blame. On the board, Ukraine was basically all of western Russia.

I was a compulsive map-gazer as a kid (and still am), so I don't even know how much I was taught geography in school. It couldn't have come close to what I taught myself. I would pin the more colorful ones from National Geographic on my walls as a kid. Which is how at one point I knew all the capitals of Africa, and all the provinces of China. Although I've forgotten most of them by now.

I know there's a lot of ignorance about, and it doesn't really surprise me when someone doesn't know Greek mythology or art or literature or science or history, but somehow it's more shocking to be ignorant of geography. The only ignorance I can think of that's more shocking than geographical ignorance is medical ignorance. I'm talking about the people who haven't the vaguest notion of how the human body works, or what various organs do, or what certain symptoms mean or don't mean. There is a great deal of that.

Part of the problem with our current technological society is that one can't understand everything, and one needs to rely on specialists. (The standard example I've often heard is that no one single person in the entire world could make a pencil by himself.) I consider myself reasonably broadly educated, but I can name dozens of services I demand, literally on a daily basis, that I couldn't myself perform and I don't need to understand. I can't harvest coffee, I can't mill paper, I can't manufacture fiber-optic cable, I can't refine petrol, I can't bind a book, I can't vulcanize rubber, I can't injection-mold plastics, etc. I also can't set a bone, fill a cavity, weld pipe, lay brick, adjust spark plug timing, install lock-sets, make cheese, butcher a steer, .... the list goes on and on. Not to mention that we are now living in a world where people often don't even bother to memorize their address or phone numbers. The numbers are always changing and it's all at your fingertips if you need it.

But I can find Benin on a blank map of Africa. yeah.

05-23-14, 08:55 AM	#2
Dread Knot Ace of the Deep Join Date: Mar 2007 Posts: 1,288 Downloads: 85 Uploads: 0	Maybe the old Parker Brothers world conquest game, Risk is to blame. On the board, Ukraine was basically all of western Russia. I was a compulsive map-gazer as a kid (and still am), so I don't even know how much I was taught geography in school. It couldn't have come close to what I taught myself. I would pin the more colorful ones from National Geographic on my walls as a kid. Which is how at one point I knew all the capitals of Africa, and all the provinces of China. Although I've forgotten most of them by now. I know there's a lot of ignorance about, and it doesn't really surprise me when someone doesn't know Greek mythology or art or literature or science or history, but somehow it's more shocking to be ignorant of geography. The only ignorance I can think of that's more shocking than geographical ignorance is medical ignorance. I'm talking about the people who haven't the vaguest notion of how the human body works, or what various organs do, or what certain symptoms mean or don't mean. There is a great deal of that. Part of the problem with our current technological society is that one can't understand everything, and one needs to rely on specialists. (The standard example I've often heard is that no one single person in the entire world could make a pencil by himself.) I consider myself reasonably broadly educated, but I can name dozens of services I demand, literally on a daily basis, that I couldn't myself perform and I don't need to understand. I can't harvest coffee, I can't mill paper, I can't manufacture fiber-optic cable, I can't refine petrol, I can't bind a book, I can't vulcanize rubber, I can't injection-mold plastics, etc. I also can't set a bone, fill a cavity, weld pipe, lay brick, adjust spark plug timing, install lock-sets, make cheese, butcher a steer, .... the list goes on and on. Not to mention that we are now living in a world where people often don't even bother to memorize their address or phone numbers. The numbers are always changing and it's all at your fingertips if you need it. But I can find Benin on a blank map of Africa. yeah.