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Borders and Boxes

Started by Payne, September 19, 2007, 03:12:14 AM

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Payne

Ideas Out of a Damn Foreigners Head Concerning Americas Western States

and/or

How Homo Sapiens Comforts Itself in the Wilderness of Life






It struck me the other day while looking at a map of the United States that many state borders are straight lines. Of course, in some case geography doesn't comply with the wishes of the map makers, and some interesting lines form on coastlines, lakes and rivers, but take a look at the western states in particular. Two states have rectangular shapes!

Now compare this to a map of the Olde Worlde, where there is nary a straight line to be seen.

This got me thinking about what this could mean. Obviously, these things are the result of history, for the most part, but they are also an interesting insight into the minds of the men and woman (mostly men, I would assume) who created these geometric masterpieces.

Ordered. Easy to manage and mark out your territory. Sensible.

A look at the history of western America, as seen through your cultures eyes (movies, books etc.) usually makes an emphasis on heroic men, and nasty villains, Cowboys, Injuns, Lewis and Clark, wars, nasty fights in small towns, money hungry men, railways.

Most of these, one would presume are not conducive to straight lines (except railways, more of which in a moment). Struggling to survive while constantly in fear for your life and/or your money would make nice straight lines FAR less of a priority, in my opinion. So how did this happen?

Thats right. Railways. Or at least the same thing that caused those railways to be built. Civilisation needs to get "there" as fast as possible, and as cheaply as possible. Building a railway in a straight line is a lot faster and cheaper than making one that snakes all over the landscape. Marking your borders on a blank page with something, anything, that has straight edge means that civilisation has arrived, doesn't it? And in double-quick time too!

Of course, the history of the western states is much different than almost anywhere else in the world, but doesn't it seem that the flawed heroes and noble villains do NOT fit into those neat lines and boxes? And of course, they didn't. They treated the whole world as theirs. It was only the small and insignifigant who paid any mind to these.... these RESTRICTIONS.

Where does that leave us?

Well the cowboys died. The Injuns were forced into boxes of their own, at gunpoint some of them. The only people left were the wide eyed innocents, the lovers of geometry and the dollar. The natives became foreigners, and the army saw to it that they stayed that way. When the highways came they, too, were arrow straight. Everyone was content with this order (except for the few rebels who became warriors of the road, and explorers of the deepest, darkest recesses of the new west. But they don't count, right?).

A once proud, vital, gunslinging people. Reduced to sheep. A people who no longer realise that they DO own the whole world, and no damned line is going to stop them. A people who don't see that they, and the world they own cannot be confined in these weird shapes and boxes and ideas, because they, and the world, are even weirder.

tyrannosaurus vex

You're pretty right-on here. Manifest Destiny, the almost religious belief that it was America's God-given duty to sprawl from Atlantic to the Pacific, was the driving force behind American history for most of the 19th Century, when these territorial lines were drawn. Also notice that States become larger the farther West you go, which is because they had to draw the borders in such a way as to appease the Constitutions stipulation on population size for a territory to become a State.

Also in the mid-1800's, there was the smallish matter of slavery (actually, States' Rights, but that's not sanctioned history).  Northern and Southern States sent out settlers into the Frontier to claim as much land and form as many States as possible in an attempt to outweigh each other in Congress.

Enough history, though.

There is still a rule of thumb in American politics and marketing that says people West of the Mississippi River are generally more "independent" and "free-thinking," and they are marketed to as such.  But the marketing works, so as long as you nail down what they think they are in your marketing campaign, you can cater to that self-image while simultaneously mocking and completely disproving it.

People in the West (I was raised in Arizona, one of the more interestingly-shaped States) are the same sheeple in the East, except they're trained to expect everything to be bigger and sprawl more.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Payne

Yeah, I know a bit more American history than is indicated above (not much compared to Scottish or European history), but I thought that looking at the wests history through modern cultures version of history was more interesting.

And while Arizona is a more interesting shape a great majority of it's borders are still straight lines.

I plan on expanding on this, probably tomorrow night.

AFK

an interesting read.  I have to digest this more before any more meaningful comments come from my mouth, er fingers. 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

LMNO

My $0.02:

The Gvt gets all this land, most of it unexplored.

They don't even know where the rivers really are, or any mountain ranges, or any sort of "normal" "natural" border would be (unlike a lot of the borders of New England and Europe).

They say, "fuck it", and start cutting it into chunks, arbitrarily.

I think the trains came much later.

LMNO
-Too lazy; didn't research.

AFK

Well from my hazy memory of my History of North American Economics course, the train certainly did play a pivotal role in the development of the West.  I can't recall how much of an impact it had on borders, though.  Then there was the enterprising cartographer that said,

"You know, there's fuck all out in this wasteland, why don't we have four of the states meeting at a point, call it the Four Corners, sit back and watch the dough roll in." 

Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Payne

I didn't EXECTLY mean that the Railways were directly responsible for for the borders as they are, just that the same linear, straightforward (common sense?) thinking is involved in both.

LMNO

Of course, you do seem to imply that there's a way to build train tracks other than in a straight line...

Cramulus


AFK

Quote from: Payne on September 19, 2007, 03:26:50 PM
I didn't EXECTLY mean that the Railways were directly responsible for for the borders as they are, just that the same linear, straightforward (common sense?) thinking is involved in both.

sorry, got my literal mind going there. 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Payne

What makes sense for railtracks is not neccesarily right for people, I guess I'm saying. It's a bizarre way to compartmentalise people, to my view, though I guess many Americans are comfortable with it.

In Europe we've had all our wars and fighting, which results in the borders you see there today.

In the West, America had all it's wars and fighting, but still the map is filled with straight edges.

I dunno, I've got something else to come off the back of this, that I'll prolly post tonight. I'm just exploring another idea from that list you posted ages back, That the Universe is stranger than the boxes we put it in.

tyrannosaurus vex

Some of the borders in America were formed by war (the border between West Virginia and Virginia, for example, which were a single State before the events leading to the "Civil War").  Mostly I think LMNO is on to something with the actual territory not being explored before being claimed or settled.  Also the lines weren't drawn as State borders originally, they were drawn to divide the huge expanse of the West into Territories.  The lines just remained more or less the same when Statehood started being granted.

Another take on this could be that after the Civil War, nationalism was on the rise (and still is) and it became less important to identify yourself by which State you were from than the fact that you were an American. State borders became a mere formality, since States were more like provinces than actual States. There wasn't a lot of attention paid to them, because it was simple enough to contract for natural resources and the like regardless of the State in which you worked, lived, or conducted business.
Evil and Unfeeling Arse-Flenser From The City of the Damned.

Bebek Sincap Ratatosk

Most of the more western states are in the plains area, the key for state borders were population density and ease of marking. Where landmarks can be used (rivers like the Ohio between Ohio and West VA) they were and they form weird borders. Where there are no defined landmarks, they use a straight line, because no one really cared at the time (like between Ohio and Indiana). In the Plains states, there aren't many big rivers, not really much in the way of mountains or great lakes... so they got the simple and straightforward line border. Arizona, California, Idaho, Nebraska, Montana, Oklahoma, Wisconsin are all examples of states where they could use a natural landmark as a border for at least part of the state.
- I don't see race. I just see cars going around in a circle.

"Back in my day, crazy meant something. Now everyone is crazy" - Charlie Manson

AFK

Other borders were drawn by Pioneering Discordians who just wanted to fuck with people. 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Payne

Hmmmm. This isn't working out to what I thought.

Flawed reasoning on my part.

Oh well. I'll take scatter gun approach, I'll hit on something eventually that is actually interesting, right?