Writing Blog

We Are "Upside Down"

This is super formal because it was a homework assignment of mine. Still, I think its worth sharing because its about something mind blowing I learned. Its not super edited so I hope its not too difficult to follow along with. 

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I find myself learning most often in informal settings of conversation. I am a naturally inquisitive person and I surround myself with intelligent people who possess diverse ideas. For this reason it is very common for me to get caught up in thought provoking conversations that I gain information from. A very recent example of a time I learned most efficiently took place in my dorm room, while two of my friends were over. We were discussing the most intriguing things we had learned in our classes. Because it tied into the subjects we were discussing, (the disparity of power between "developed and "developing" nations) my friend brought up something that she had learned in high school. She went on to explain the relativity of our directions. North and South, she went on, were very much decided directions. There is no certified "top of the world" or bottom for that matter. My other friend and I went on to try and disprove her theory. After all, we argued, there is a North and South Pole. In addition to that, all of our compasses point North. Yet, our arguments were dismantled. The North and South Pole were picked. Yes they are on opposite ends of the globe but who is to say they cannot be switched? Furthermore, our compasses are merely polarized to face a certain direction; the direction chosen is "north." This blew my mind, but in a way it made a lot of sense. The way anyone would position a globe would leave the North Pole, along with Western powers and primarily "developed" countries, on the top, facing "True North." This socially accepted image of the globe leaves most of the "developing" countries toward the bottom, "True South." The line of thinking that challenges the accepted notions of direction could also lead one to question why a flat map starts with the Americas on the left and ends with the continent of Asia on the right; after all a circle has no beginning. Who decided? (Perhaps the planners that Percy speaks about in "Loss of the Creature") After my friend finished explaining her argument I still struggled to see past the image of the world that I had been taught for so long. Mentally I pulled back, zoomed as far out as I could imagine and saw the globe. I know for a fact that the Earth is tilted, that the sun shines on an angle, that there's an axis to the Earth. I know that the Heavenly Bodies revolve around the sun and often align in straight lines. This constitutes that the sun and planets are "beside" each other; looking at it this way, the Sun is not on top of the Earth or below it; the planets revolve around the Sun's sides. So if one were to argue that Earth's sides are set, there would still be the question of the remaining two directions, North and South. Finally my friend said something that put all my wonderings to rest. There is no North in space. We are floating free. Therefore there is nothing tying us down to a North or South. After hearing this, I was completely blown away. I had a tapestry of the globe hanging on my wall and proceeded to turn it upside down. Everything is relative, after all. 

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Thanks for reading. I hope you got something out of it. Isn't that crazy though? I wonder how many other things that we've been programmed to believe are also just made up?...