Lessons From Google Earth I

[danalwyn]

Part of my job involves spending a lot of time looking at maps, so I spend a lot of time with both Google Maps and Google Earth. Google Earth in particular I find fascinating, it serves not only as a valuable tool for navigation, but as sort of a window on the world. Despite my skepticism about new technology, I've learned a lot from that window on the world, without even having to pay for the plane tickets.


Whenever anyone goes away on vacation to a foreign country, one of the inevitable things that they say when they come back is that "It's a beautiful country".

Of course it's a beautiful country. One thing that looking at the Earth taught me early on is that, really, there's no such thing as a non-beautiful countries. Oh, some countries might have more spectacular examples of mountains, or beaches, or forests, or cities than others, but none of them have a monopoly on beauty. Likewise every country has its ugly underside, and while the quantity and quality of that might differ from country to country, really that's just nitpicking.

Let's go find some sterotypically ugly countries:

Sudan, endless desert, wasteland, and starving people:

Source: Panoramio

Colombia, Winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award in Drug Violence:

Source: Panoramio

San Marino, too small to see on a map:

Source: Panoramio

Kyrgyzstan, known for being in the middle of fucking nowhere:

Source: Panoramio

There are two plausible reasons for this, depending on where you believe the Earth came from.

• If you believe that the Earth is the result of an unordered and undirected series of natural processes that include plate tectonics, biological evolution, and local adaptation, then the answer is obvious. The same natural forces that created awe inspiring works of natural spectacle, like the Grand Canyon, or Yosemite, or Niagara Falls, are at work in every single part of the world. There isn't a country that isn't being shaped by those forces, and then sculpted by the people that now live there. Life, nature, and the environment of our planet are remarkably consistent, and every place on Earth is touched by those forces. If you find their effects beautiful anywhere, you are likely to find their effects beautiful everywhere.


• If you believe the Earth is of divine origin, then the divine creator's work is everywhere. It's not like God got bored and just decided to lump a bunch of rocks together, or slap together some islands in the middle of nowhere. There's no divine reject pile, no supernatural garbage dump. Earth is the result of the same set of hands, and those hands did not have to spend time experimenting to learn how to do it.

Either way, the Earth, the whole Earth is beautiful. The whole Earth is ugly. Maybe we should learn some kind of lesson from that.