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IT’LL NEVER WORK! A Cultural History of Naysaying by Ari Turunen Original title EI ONNISTU! Vastustamisen kultturihistoriaa, published by Atena, 2009 sample translation by Lola Rogers

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Contents Statement of the Defense: Naysaying is second nature to us An introduction, wherein we understand that defending old habits is only human. The Desire for Order Tried and True Objection Number One: World View on the Rack First objection, wherein we object to those who would try to reorganize our worldview. The World Turns Around Us Self-Centered Time A Self-Centered Universe Objection Number Two: What You don’t Know Can’t Hurt You Second objection, wherein it is observed that a philosopher is known by his exile, and a classic by its burnt and blackened pages. Vanity Fairs Scientific Heretics Machine Breakers Objection Number Three: Creativity Without a License Third objection, wherein we object to creative individuals who make too radical a break from agreed-upon rules of free expression. Les Enfants Terribles of the Arts The Devil’s Stage Sowing Discord Addicted to Reading Media Incitement The Unacceptable Lust of Creativeness Objection Number Four: O Tempora! O Mores! Fourth Objection, wherein we object to changing customs and fashions. Sinful Pleasures Forbidden Kitchens Disgraceful Hygiene Shameless Fashion

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Changing Forms of Morality Objection Number Five: Objection to the Objections Fifth objection, wherein we object to objection itself. Overcoming Suspicion The Power of Words Charisma Determination Get People Committed, Then Delegate Afterthoughts: Forget the Generation Gap and Learn to Accept Opposition A summary offering the good news that both the over-exuberance of youth and the weary head-shaking of age are equally necessary.

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FOREWORD

The musical tastes and other predilections of youth have always been astonishingly bad. This

book is a journey back to the good old days, when people longed for the good old days.

Naysaying is one of our most ubiquitous modes of behavior. In all places and at all times,

people have objected to new customs, thoughts and fashions. This book presents phenomena

that, though vehemently resisted in the past, are generally accepted today. Thus it refrains from

any discussion whatsoever of the EU constitution. I write in an unapologetic spirit of hindsight. I

am well aware of my future fate. I laugh today, knowing that I am destined to be the stick-in-the-

mud of tomorrow.

I hope this journey through the history of human conservatism is an enjoyable and en-

lightening one, and that it will help form a better foundation for tolerance of differing points of

view, grace when in the wrong, and understanding and acceptance of the habits of those from

another generation.

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Statement of the Defense:

Naysaying is second nature to us

We are generally suspicious of anything new that strays from the familiar order of things. Alt-

hough change is the spice of life, we prefer to decide ourselves when and where we shall have it.

It’s natural to oppose change.

People love order. It’s pleasant to always sit in the same chair at meetings, to read the paper in

the order we always do. Lord help us if the newspaper’s layout is redesigned or the evening news

schedule is altered or a familiar company changes its name. Armchair athletes still remember

those moments of horror when ski jumpers adopted the V-position and cross-country skiers took

up the skater’s kick.

It’s easier to say no to anything new than it is to accept innovations. People don’t change

if they don’t have to. Anyone who’s struggled with new software knows that getting comfortable

with a new system is often unpleasant and stressful. It’s easy to plead that what we have has al-

ways worked fine. We don’t like to be surprised, and we can’t bear anything out of the ordinary.

Who of us hasn’t looked with a suspicious eye on new developments or organizational improve-

ments at work. “Development” and “improvement” could mean practically anything. EU bureau-

crats had a hard time winning the vote for the European constitution because no one can under-

stand their convoluted language. If there’s going to be change, we prefer to decide when and

where it happens.

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The Desire for Order

Our world view is shaped by our environment, the environment we’re used to, the one that is our

measure of normalcy. Our world view is like our home, where our things are organized the way

we like them. We become annoyed the moment someone rearranges our bookshelves or the pa-

pers on our desk without asking. Our system, no matter how nebulous it may seem to the outsid-

er, has been compromised, replaced by something that feels uncomfortable, abnormal. We hold

fast to our daily routines, and they in turn take the shape that we want them to take.

In all our experiences, we demand order. Even children’s games are governed by their

own unquestioned system of organization. The slightest deviation from the rules can ruin the

game, wrest it from its true nature, render it worthless. Once the rules have been broken, the play

world collapses and the game is overi.

Humans seek law and order even in creativity. Poetry should have a definable rhythm and

rhyme, literature should be “comprehensible”, paintings should “show something”, music should

have a “melody”. When the groundbreaking dancer Isadora Duncan freed dance from the corset

and appeared in her bare feet, dressed in a tunic, she was mocked in the press as the priestess of

the barefoot dance. Though her work was a continuation of ancient dance traditions, it was nev-

ertheless surprising and radical, and broke too many rules.

People can’t simply categorize things according to their own whims. Categories bring

order to our lives. Our parliaments are made up of the the right, the left and the center. The world

must be divided into continents, although no one really knows where Europe ends and Asia be-

gins. Time must be measured, even though no one can tell you exactly what time is. Artists who

don’t know if they’re impressionists, expressionists, modernists or surrealists are, according to

the critics, postmodernists. A musician plays folk if he has an accordion, rock if he has an elec-

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tric guitar, and classical music if he has a cello. Johann Sebastian Bach has been canonized as

one of the great classical musicians, not as a representative of the pop music of his era. If Bach

lived today, he would probably be the organist in a heavy metal band.

At the first burst of creativity, society usually holds fast to the accepted order, which

shows itself in traditions, taboos, rules and regulationsii. Once rules and categories are accepted,

it is difficult to change them. The official machinery invokes prescribed laws, laws that won’t

change unless they’re faced with something that challenges their nature enough to constitute a

significant precedent.

Humans hold stubbornly to whatever they are accustomed to. The world is full of rules

and systems that are known to be inadequate, yet nevertheless impossible to change. A classic

example of stubborn, even senseless adherence to accepted systems is the typewriter keyboard.

This book was written on a computer keyboard with a fourth row of keys that begins on

the left with the letters QWERTY. These letters weren’t put on the left by mere chance. The

typewriter keyboard was designed in the United States in 1873 to slow down the majority of typ-

ists – that is, those who were right-handed.

The reason for this peculiar idea was the efficiency of the people using the machine: typ-

ists were causing the most popular letters to jam by typing them too quickly, and the manufac-

turers needed to slow them down. Thus, the most commonly used letters in English were placed

on the left side of the keyboard so that right-handed typists would type them with their weaker

hand. Although the manufacturers solved the problem of jammed keys over time, they insisted

on keeping the keys in the same old arrangement. Hundreds of millions of typewriters with

QWERTY keyboards had already been soldiii.

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Since that time, typewriter and computer manufacturers have resisted efforts at redesign.

The QWERTY keyboard has become a global standard that will probably not be reworked until

the day people stop writing. In Northern Europe, the keyboard doesn’t really present any major

problems, since it has the most popular, most commonly used letters in the Nordic languages –

K, L, Ö, and Ä – on the right side.

The history of the keyboard reveals a harsh truth. The more new users take up a given

system, the harder it is to change. People become bound to it, and in the end we accept that the

majority is right, even when they’re wrong.

Conservatism is a formidable force of nature. One of the most long-lasting and unchang-

ing sets of rules in history was the guild system. In the Middle Ages, guilds determined the quali-

ty, price, and materials of handicrafts. If a master craftsman broke the rules, the alderman, or

oldest member, could expel him from the guild, levy fines against him, or even send him to pris-

on. What was originally an efficient means of guaranteeing quality became in the end so efficient

that it was inefficient. The trade guilds relied so heavily on their old rules that they prevented the

creation of any new enterprises. Each guild set the number of masters in their craft and new

members could join only through inheritance. The guilds were hostile to any craftsmen from out-

side the guild, who were known as fuskers, a word that came to mean someone both incompetent

and dishonestiv.

But no system can last if it doesn’t examine its rules and standards now and then. Over

the course of centuries, the guild system became an intolerable incumbrance to the marketplace,

a club for manipulators who opposed any and all change. In their resistance to change, crafts

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A guild workshop. Each profession had its own patron saint, flag, and seal. Members of the guild lived on the same

street and often wore a guild-specific costume. Guild members were told how many hours they could work, how

many apprentices they could take on, and how many goods they could produce. The professional guilds prevented

new forms of enterprise from being created and were hostile to any craftsmen who weren’t members.

guilds were phenomenally successful. The guild system didn’t end until after the French Revolu-

tion, in 1792. In Finland, freedom to choose one’s profession wasn’t granted until the 1800sv.

Although the guilds did eventually cause their own downfall, their 600-year history

shows how difficult it is to change an old system, let alone create a new one. There will always

be opponents willing to water down virtually any attempt at reform.

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Before the adoption of Arabic numerals, European merchants used the abacus to make

their calculations. In Italy, merchants eagerly took up Arabic numerals because they were quick-

er and easier than an abacus. But the authorities put the brakes on the spread of the new numbers.

In Florence, Arabic numerals were banned in 1299 on the grounds that they could easily be falsi-

fied or misrecorded. Among the objections was the claim that a zero could easily be mistaken for

a sixvi. It was nearly a century before Roman numerals were abandoned in Europe.

The story of Arabic numbers and the universality of the QWERTY keyboard are excep-

tional cases. Most of the time, the world measures itself with its own ruler, rather than its neigh-

bor’s. That’s why cars continue to move in the same direction, but do so in opposite lanes on op-

posite sides of the English Channel. It’s why a billion is a thousand million in Britain and a mil-

lion million in the rest of Europe. It’s why you can’t plug the same electric razor into an outlet in

both Europe and the United States.

It would be nice if there were one currency and one system of measurement, but whose

money and whose tape measures would we all agree to use? Britain has officially followed the

metric system since 1965, but it is a rare British shopkeeper who advertises his wares by the kilo

and gram. If a car from continental Europe is registered in Britain, it must nevertheless have the

speedometer switched from kilometers to miles before it’s ever taken for a drive in the island na-

tion.

There are, in principle, many good ideas in the world, but annoyingly often they are

thought up at the wrong time or in the wrong head. When the American Benjamin Franklin in-

vented the lightning rod and proved that lightning is a form of electricity, he quite correctly de-

duced that a sharp-pointed rod would be most efficient at attracting and directing lightning.

Many men of science disputed this, believing that a round end would work better. The British

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Royal Society was given the task of determining which design was better, but the dispute was

settled in the end by King George III. The king’s reasoning wasn’t terribly scientific: he was fu-

rious at the Americans for their revolution, so he had round-ended and thus, to his mind, indubi-

tably anti-American lightning rods installed on all the royal buildingsvii.

The coexistence of differing systems can constitute a risk to national pride that can at

times be costly. NASA, the U.S. space agency, learned this when a Mars probe they launched

strayed embarrassingly off course by 80 kilometers and crashed into the planet’s surface. In the

process of planning the mission, the engineers had confused American inches and European cen-

timeters.

Tried and True

The reason for naysaying can be found in our genes. Evolution has made us contrarians.

In the animal kingdom, there is rarely submission without a struggle. Animals fight for domi-

nance in the social hierarchy or to secure their territorial rights. Fights decide who’s who, then

the dust settles.

Herding animals want to be led, but only once they’ve made a decision on who is suffi-

ciently tough to lead them. Humans have only managed to tame the most strictly hierarchical of

the herding species. In a herd of horses, the stallion is last. The herd is led by a mare, followed

by her colts, arranged by age, beginning with the youngest. These are followed by the other

mares and their colts. In this way, many full-grown horses can live together in the heard without

constant fighting. Tamed horses will follow a person as they would normally follow the lead

mare. Sheep, cows, goats, and dogs have the same hierarchyviii.

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Like the apes, humans fight for both status and territory. Pollaiuolo’s copper engraving from the 1400s of youth at

battle.

It is with these animals that human team leadership ends. Other animals resist. The zebra,

for instance, has not consented to a working arrangement with humans, although it is, of course,

a herd animal. The stubbornness of zebras shows in the fact that it has a nasty habit of biting one

and refusing to let go. Zebras cause more staff injuries every year in American zoos than tigers

doix.

Though the zebra is in a class by itself when it comes to obstinance, no animal is as im-

possible as the primates. Naysaying is downright second nature for apes and humans, who fight

for both status and territory. The leader of a troop of apes behaves like an old-time lumber baron,

bullying his underlings, storming around shoving and shouting. Apes gang up on each other.

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They connive, cheat, and fight constantly. When a leader becomes old and weak, his place is

usurped by a younger or stronger malex.

It’s easy for animals to choose a leader. The leader is generally the strongest and most

ruthless. For people, it’s not so simple. They don’t automatically choose the strongest person to

be their leader.

Philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that what separates people from animals is the fact

that they think too much of themselves. We compete constantly for supremacy, which foments

envy, hatred, and eventually war. We’re constantly comparing ourselves to others, and thus we

are never satisfied. Unlike the animals, there are many among us who believe themselves more

capable than the rest, and their attempts to advance their various reforms and inventions end in

schism and conflictxi.

Hobbes believed that the reason for conflict was humans’ vanity and incessant ambition.

The more power and lucre a person amasses, the more difficult he becomes. Every tour guide

knows, as Hobbes did, that a person that the most difficult people are those who are most com-

fortable, because they love to show off their wisdom and control the actions of others.

To curb the growth of complacency, there must be a shared authority that can keep peo-

ple disciplined and channel their activities for the common good. That shared authority is the

machinery of power, in whose reins lies the authority, agreed upon by common consent. Without

these conditions, Hobbes says, everyone will be at war with everyone else.

Every leader of a human tribe knows that the task of leading is a difficult one. A leader

who becomes a focus of opposition is one who has not understood that humans will fight to de-

fend their independence. They do not want to submit to domination. Humans also struggle with

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their own vulnerable consciences. They are always asking themselves why, and striving to find

an understandable, meaningful answerxii.

Since one person’s meaningful answer is another’s senseless one, it is no wonder that

each of us wants to be a freelancer, an independent entrepreneur, the hero of our own lives, liv-

ing self-sufficiently in a cabin with our spouse making naturally-dyed fabrics. More often than

not, however, it is our fate to endure paid employment, living as an “individual” tied to an organ-

ization, our disappointment in ourselves frequently erupting in the form of questioning the work

we are asked to do.

The textile artist living in a cabin represents our longing for a hazy state of independence

where we can be far from petty bosses, the jungle of computer passwords, and tax auditors. This

is a peculiarly Western form of resistance romanticized in our literature.

When some traveler steps into such a hideaway to tell exciting tales of new developments

in the provinces, you don’t have to be a genius to predict that dark clouds that will amass on the

textile artist’s horizon. This uninvited guest in the artist’s little home will be greeted with a good

deal of suspicion. What’s he up to? What does he want from us?

Outside consultants have always been resisted. Missionaries have had a famously rough

time of it. Finland is Europe’s next-to-last country to convert to Christianity. Only Lithuania held

onto its own ancient beliefs longer. A Finnish national hero of resistance to change is a peasant

by the name of Lalli who couldn’t tolerate Bishop Henrik’s arrogant, pontificating sermons on

the new religion and culture. According to legend, Lalli whacked the bishop in the head on the

frozen surface of a lake in Köyliö in 1156. Tithes to the church and the arcane rules of hospitality

did not fit into Lalli’s world view.

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Lalli was a classic naysayer, unwilling to sully his view of the world according to the

specifications and preoccupations of an outside consultant from the church. Although his agita-

tion at Bishop Henrik could have been due to personal chemistry, a reason for his opposition

may also be found in how his brain is wired. Stubborn, conservative thinking can originate in

ancient connections within human brain cells.

A Finnish legend of resistance to change: Lalli kills Bishop Henrik. Painting by C.A. Ekman.

Every human brain cell contains a couple of thousand connecting branches, or synapses,

that are in contact with a couple of thousand other brain cells. These connections can only form

through active use. Once a connection is formed, it is usually preserved. In practical terms, this

means that we make sense of things by connecting them to things we already understand. Our

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brains are constructed in such a way that we generally use only certain, already established syn-

aptic pathways. Our brain cells tell us how to respond to things. That’s why we function best on

a foundation of concepts that are old and familiar to us. These things become habits. We get in a

rut.

Because new connections cannot easily and flexibly form in the heads of old naysayers

like Lalli, they do not come off as very innovative. A naysayer has only two choices – to build

fresh connections in his brain by being open to new thoughts and ideas, or to continue to

strengthen the old connections by clinging to old patterns, letting his thoughts travel the same old

stubborn cell pathways that they’ve always followed.

The mind of an old naysayer is constructed differently than a young person’s mind. Chil-

dren and youths are open to new ideas. The synapses in their brains haven’t yet had time to be-

come hard-wired, they don’t yet have preconceived notions. It is perhaps no surprise, then, that

we send children to school when they’re seven years old, or to the army when they’re twenty.

Middle-aged pupils or recruits might have an inconvenient abundance of ideas of their own about

social studies or how to lead troops.

Many people protect their own world view and avoid anything that doesn’t fit into it or

threatens its assumptions. Leon Festinger has approached this idea through his concept of cogni-

tive dissonance. The term refers to the idea that people only want to know about things that cor-

respond to their preconceptions. That is why we often view with suspicion any idea that comes

from outside of our own heads or our own culture. In Objection Number One, we will examine

the ways that people have opposed attempts to alter their view of the world.

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Objection Number One:

Tearing at the Fabric of Our World

Wherein we object to world views that differ from those we are accustomed to, dividing our ire

among mapmakers, astronomers, and calendar designers.

A great scientist or explorer is one who has added some new discovery to the pages of history.

Given the blessing of hindsight, many of them would no doubt prefer to stay at home and tend

their gardens rather than venture forth heroically to reveal the secrets of the universe. They might

shake their heads and politely but firmly decline the offer of a voyage of discovery. The voyage

will be too rocky and full of doubters and the road is laced with land mines. A person doesn’t

come home alive from a voyage of discovery, generally speaking, and even if they do, they’re

wasting their time if they expect to be rewarded within their own lifetime.

The greatest sin of searchers for truth hasn’t been the truths they’ve found, but the ways

that those truths have threatened the reigning view of the world. Making discoveries is as dan-

gerous as talking politics with a stranger. Cherished world views are sacred things, and clashes

between people often stem from the differences between them.

It’s a merciless world. A new worker on the job asks questions that are annoying, because

they seem to call into question well-established habits of behavior. An idealistic candidate for

son-in-law might disturb a father-in-law’s system of values. That’s why a son-in-law and a fa-

ther-in-law strive to avoid open conflict, and conversations over coffee are almost entirely devot-

ed to the father-in-law’s youth, the spawning seasons of fish, and other comforting subjects.

We’re used to our own little sandbox, and we jealously guard its values. What is safe is

what is familiar. That’s why societal boundaries the world over are generally born from familiar-

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ity, and thus safety. A member of a group knows the area that the group lives in, where you can

go, what you can say. He understands the customs and habits of the society he lives in. Anything

that strays from these ordinary habits causes discomfort and uncertainty.

It’s strange, and thus unpleasant, to encounter people and things that we can’t fit into a

framework. Opposition often arises from fear of the unknown. That which we cannot define we

often fear, and thus oppose.

The World Turns Around Us

When the Portuguese Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci visited the Chinese court at the end of the 16th

century and presented them with a European map of the world, with Europe visibly in the center,

some members of the court chuckled at this representation of the worldxiii.

To the Chinese, it was unthinkable to see their own country at the edge of the map. China

was, after all, the Middle Kingdom, its capitol situated on the heavenly meridian, directly under

the Pole Star. The Chinese were accustomed to maps with China emphatically in the middle and

the rest of the world – including Europe – situated around it in the form of tiny islands. The Chi-

nese and the Europeans couldn’t accept each others’ maps, because, of course, no one lives at the

insignificant fringes of the map. The written character for China still, in fact, indicates the center.

And in the United States people still believe there’s no need to communicate with the world in

any language but their own.

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In every culture, people living far away have been traditionally considered barbaric yokels. This Chinese map of the

world from 1613 depicts “the civilized world and surrounding barbarian regions”. In the center is the Middle King-

dom (China), on the right edge of the map is Japan, and on the left the “Roman Kingdom”. Other barbarian areas

are “The Long-Legged Country” and “The Land of Dwarves”.

Globalization notwithstanding, people are hopelessly provincial. The invention of agri-

culture 10,000 years ago created societies tied to time and place. The word cultivate, originally

applied to agriculture, began to be used to refer to human cultivation as well. When agricultural-

ists began to create their own value systems – that is, their cultures – they also staked out the

identifying markers of social identity.

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Many cultures have a similar fundamental idea of self and other. The myths of human

groups have often had a tendency to depict themselves as small, threatened islands in a sea of

dangerxiv. When we settled into an area we were founding a society, and giving it rules and

boundaries. We think of the place where we’ve settled as a holy land and the areas outside of it

as barbarian, inhuman. These barbarians, with their strange customs, are a threat to our values

and give us a reason to build a wall around our society.

A wall is an important symbol. Medieval Christians believed that Alexander the Great

had built an iron wall between two mountains near the Caspian Sea to keep the barbarian inhab-

itants of Gog and Magog out of Europe. The wall had no gates and was impossible to scale. But

according to the story, every night you could hear the sound of the tools of the barbarians as they

tried in vain to dig a tunnel into Christendomxv.

The Chinese didn’t rely on legends. They began building the Great Wall as early as 200

BCE to close off northern tribes from civilized Chinese life. In a Finnish cartoon from 1908 a

wall is drawn at the eastern edge of the country to separate the law and order of Finland from the

chaos of Russia. On the other side of the gates of Karelia lurks the Russian bear, trying, as Gog

and Magog did, to force its way into Finland.

Every culture has its own walls, laws, customs, and boundaries. To members of another

culture, they represent another kind of order, and they have the potential to shake up what is fa-

miliar and safe. A culture defends its own cherished, shared values as resolutely as it opposes the

value systems of others.

This signature suspiciousness was actually a foundation of classical political thought. Ac-

cording to Aristotle, no humanity was possible outside of the Greek city state, or polis. It was

only within the limited confines of the city state that a good life could exist. Only beasts and

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gods lived outside the state. The beasts, or sub-humans, on the outside were war-crazed, without

families, laws, or homesxvi.

Aristotle was referring to a lack of order that he considered the defining characteristic of

the barbarian. The lifestyle of a barbarian wandering the steppes presented a different order. His

language seemed as confused as his appearance. The term barbarian comes from the ancient

Greek. To the Greeks, foreign languages sounded like the barking of a dog (barbar), which led

them to conclude that foreigners must be at the same level of development as dogs. When we

don’t have even a basic knowledge of a language’s meanings or semantics it sounds like mere

rhythmic noise, even idiotic.

The Greeks weren’t unique in their self-importance. The Indians also used the term bar-

bara or varvara for outsiders, which in Sanskrit meant an incomprehensible, babbling foreigner

who used an excessive and grating amount of Rs in his speechxvii.

In many cultures neighboring groups are called stammerers, because they speak in amus-

ing dialects, or deaf, because they can’t understand our language. The Slavs’ name for the Ger-

manic people meant “unable to speak”. The Maya of Central America called members of neigh-

boring tribes babblers. Dutch explorers who found the languages of South Africa almost fart-like

were no doubt having the same natural reaction to foreign language, and old textbooks refer to

Khoisa speakers by the Dutch name Hottentot, which means stammerer.

The idea that our own culture is more civilized and advanced than someone else’s is as

old as humanity. The ancient Egyptians called the Hittites “miserable Asians” and the Japanese

called the Europeans “the Southern barbarians.” The Chinese believed Europeans were uncivi-

lized because they ate with their “swords”.

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The argument for the unpredictability of outsiders has also been around since the dawn of

history. In Medieval Europe it was believed that there were hairy, dark-skinned, wild people in

the woods surrounding their villages who would try to snatch away their helpless women and

children. The wild-man barbarian situation was believed to be caused by the neglect of social

norms and customsxviii. The words for woods and strangers, forest and foreigner, share the same

latin root, foranus, which means outsidexix. Evil comes from outside of society, from the wild

world of disorder.

People are complacent products of their environment. Stupidity and barbarism, which are

indicated by a ghastly-sounding, mixed-up way of talking, grow worse the farther one gets from

one’s own country.

In the traditional Chinese concept of the world, the farther you go from China, the more

barbaric the people are. In the outermost regions, someplace around Europe, you’ll find only

wild men and monstersxx. According to the historian Tacitus, the far North was filled with the

most despicable wild men – the fenni, or Finns. Tacitus believed that beyond the region of the

fenni there might be monstersxxi. The Arabs believed that in the farthest north, in places like

Norway and Finland, there were wild people living in the treesxxii.

Al-Masud, an Arab who lived in the 900s, questioned the abilities of white skinned peo-

ple, just as European eugenicists did dark-skinned people a thousand years later. According to

Al-Masud, white skin was caused by excessive moisture in the body, which led to bad conduct

and a dull mindxxiii. He believed that Iraq and Syria were the only healthy, agreeable countries in

the worldxxiv.

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Ancient and medieval people naturally thought that distant regions were inhabited by monsters. According to Pliny

the Elder, there were over 20 different types of monsters living in the far-flung regions of the world. Africa was

filled with cannibals who drank from skulls (anthropophagi) and four-eyed creatures (maritimi). In India were those

without mouths (astomi) and those with dog heads (cynocephali). Those with horses hooves instead of feet happily

made their home in the Baltic.

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Medieval people believed that outside of the known world, in Africa and Asia, there lived

people with only one foot, people with dog’s heads, cannibals, satyrs. These old tales of mon-

sters made their way onto European maps. Once European mapmakers had decided that the edg-

es of the earth were inhabited by monsters, the idea was hard to shake. Although mariners and

merchants had different ideas about the one-eyed oddities of India and Africa, mapmakers pre-

ferred to consult the older authorities rather than updating their view of the world.

Marco Polo visited China in the 13th century, and there is no mention in his writings of

monsters, unless you count one report of dog-like cannibals in the kingdom of Lambri and the

Andaman Islandsxxv. It was typical of the medieval world view that these familiar monster stories

were considered less preposterous than Polo’s descriptions of the riches of the Chinese emperor.

He was even given the mocking nickname Il Millione.

A work that was much more popular than Marco Polo’s writings was John de Mande-

ville’s Travels, published in 1375. A more accurate title would be Armchair Travels, since this

father of all lying travel guides writes about monsters in India, fountains of youth, and other be-

liefs from ancient times. De Mandeville gave the people what they wanted. Unknown regions

were filled with products of his own imagination, fed on fear and fantasy.

Maps depicting monsters and fountains of youth, Eldorados and paradisical lands were at

one time part of popular culture. The evil and the bizarre had to be somewhere, but always somewhere far

from here. Space creatures in today’s science fiction are, with few exceptions, similarly diabolical.

Maps colored by imagination that hung on the altars of the churches of the Middle Ages offered a

view of the world that pleased the Christian eye. The same canvas presented Jerusalem at the center of the

world, a “civilized” world surrounded by barbarian lands, which in turn were surrounded by regions filled

with monsters. All of this was surrounded by an ocean filled with sea monsters. The world of the altar

maps was flat as a pancake – a Christian pancake.

26

It wasn’t easy to think of the globe as a globe. For the church, the image of people going about

head-downward was an excellent means of making the classical theory of a spherical earth ridiculous in

the eyes of the peoplexxvi. It was nonsensical to think that people on the other side of the world were man-

aging to live upside-down like that.

It seemed absurd to think that there were people who’s feet pointed in the same direction that

normal people’s heads did. The French scholar Nicola Oresme attempted to show how ridiculous the idea

of a round earth was by imagining a tunnel bored through to the other side of the earth, with a person lo-

cated in the exact center. For such a person, which direction would be up, and which down? Which direc-

tion would his head be pointed, and which direction his feet? According to Oresme, both the head and feet

of this unfortunate person would necessarily be pointed up, and he would thus be neither standing nor

lying downxxvii.

Ruminations such as these twisted themselves in the imaginations of mapmakers into monsters

whose legs stuck out helplessly above them. Such creatures appear on the margins of the maps in Hart-

mann Schedel’s 1493 Nürnberg Chronicle.

In Columbus’s time, the learned had good reason to believe that the world was round. Neverthe-

less, when Columbus was pleading for money to finance a journey to India by a western route, advisors to

the Spanish court opposed the plan specifically due to the shape of the earth. The advisors claimed that if

one sailed far enough from the home harbor, one’s ship would encounter a steeper and steeper downhill

curve, until eventually it would be impossible to return, even with a strong tailwindxxviii.

When, after numerous delays and doubts, and without encountering any troublesomely steep oce-

anic hillsides, Columbus came ashore on the Caribbean Islands, his world view was not vitally altered. He

never did believe that he’d landed anywhere other than India. He mentions in his journals and letters that

he heard stories of Amazons and cannibals with dog’s heads, just as Marco Polo had. Although Columbus

never saw these creatures, this hearsay confirmed their reality for Europeans. In 1493 a woodcut by Giuli-

ano Dati included an authoritative depiction of no less than eight types of monsters encountered in Amer-

27

icaxxix. Five years later a book by John of Holywood claimed that the American natives were blue and had

square headsxxx.

No one had ever seen such creatures with their own eyes, but their existence conformed to the

predominant view of the world, in which Europe had a special status as an island of civilization in the

middle of a wild, uncivilized sea. The monsters of other continents remained tenaciously on the pages of

maps right up until the 1700s.

Maps reinforce our self-centeredness, because they show us the world the way we want it to be.

We’re so used to our own school atlases that alternative depictions of the world are difficult or even im-

possible to accept. That’s why Australian world maps, with Australia on the “top” and Europe on the

“bottom” or along the edges, are “upside down” to a European mind.

28

SOURCES: Al-Azmed, Aziz (1992): Barbarians in Arab Eyes. Past & Present 134, 3-18. Aristotle (1991): Politiikka (Politics). Translated by A.M. Anttila. Gaudeamus, Jyväskylä. Bang, Gustav (1926): Euroopan sivistyshistoria. Vanha ja keskiaika (A History of European Ci-vilization: Ancient and Medieval Periods). Translated by O.A.Forsström. WSOY, Porvoo. Bohm, David & F. David. Peat (1992): Tiede, järjestys ja luovuus (Science, Order and Creativi-ty). Translated by Tiina Seppälä, Jukka Jääskeläinen and Paavo Pylkkänen. Gaudeamus, Helsin-ki. Bronowski, Jacob (1988): Ihmisen vaiheet (The Ascent of Man). Translated by Antero Manninen. Kirjayhtymä, Helsinki. Cohen, Bernard (1992): What Columbus "Saw" in 1492. Scientific American, December. Diamond, Jared (1998): Guns, Germs and Steel. A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years. Vintage, London. Edgerton, Samuel Y. (1987): From Mental Matrix to Mappamundi to Christian Empire. The Heritage of Ptolemaic Cartography in the Renaissance. Teoksessa Art and Cartography. Six His-torical Essays, ed. David Woodward. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London. Hobbes, Thomas (1999): Leviathan eli kirkollisen ja valtiollisen yhteiskunnan aines, muoto ja valta (Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Ci-vil). Translated by Tuomas Aho. Vastapaino, Tampere. Huizinga, Johan (1984): Leikkivä ihminen (Homo Luden: A Study of the Play Element in Cultu-re). Translated by Sirkka Salomaa. WSOY, Juva. Huizinga, Johan (1989): Keskiajan syksy (The Autumn of the Middle Ages). Translated by J.A Hollo. WSOY, Juva. Järvinen, Pekka (1999): Esimiestyö ongelmatilanteissa – konfliktien luomat haasteet työyh-teisössä. WSOY, Porvoo. Kish, George (1978): A Source Book of Geography. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mas-sachusetts, and London, England. Lehti, Raimo (1993): Antiikin maailmankuvasta löytöretkiin. From Imago Mundi. Ihmisen ja tie-teen uudet maailmat, ed. Raimo Lehti & Jan Rydman. WSOY, Porvoo. Meserve, Ruth (1982): The Inhospitable Land of the Barbarian. The Journal of Asian History, XVI, 51-89.

29

Osserman, Robert (1997): Kosmoksen runous. Maailmankaikkeuden matemaattinen tutkimus (Poetry of the Universe: A Mathematical Exploration of the Cosmos). Translated by Kimmo Pietiläinen. Terra Cognita, Vaasa. Polo, Marco (1911): The Travels of Marco Polo the Venetian. J.M Dent, London. Robe, Stanley L. (1972): Wild Man and Spain's Brave New World. From A Wild Man Within. An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Edward Dudley & Maxi-millian E. Novak. The University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh. Seife, Charles (2001): Nollan elämäkerta (Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea). Transla-ted by Risto Varteva. WSOY, Juva. Stein, Howard. F (1987). Developmental Time, Cultural Space: Studies in Psychogeography. From Maps From the Mind, ed. Howard F. Stein & William G. Niederland. University of Okla-homa Press, Norman and London. Tacitus (1988): Germania. Translated by Tuomo Pekkanen. Yliopistopaino, Helsinki. Tuan, Yi-Fu (1979): Landscapes of Fear. University of Minnesota Press. Turunen, Ari (1997): The Politics of Displaying Geo. Tha Spatial Order of Ecumenical World Maps. Licentiate thesis. Helsinki University. White, Hayden (1972): The Forms of Wildness: Archaelogy of an Idea. From A Wild Man With-in. An Image in Western Thought from the renaissance to Romanticism, ed. Edward Dudley & Maximillian E. Novak. The University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh.

30

i Huizinga 1984, 21.

ii Bohm & Peat 1992, 213.

iii Diamond 1998, 248.

iv Bang 1926, 286.

v Ibid.

vi Seife 2001, 96-97.

vii Bronowski 1988, 148.

viii Diamond 1998, 173.

ix Ibid., 172.

x Morris 1968, 142-143.

xi Hobbes 1991, 159-160.

xii Järvinen 1998, 19.

xiii Edgerton 1987, 26.

xiv Stein 1987, 3-6.

xv Meserve 1982, 78.

xvi Aristotle 1991, 1253a.

xvii Meserve 1982, 66.

xviii White 1972, 21, 30.

xix Tuan 1979, 81.

xx Turunen 1997, 42.

xxi Tacitus 1988, 77.

xxii Al-Azmeh 1992, 12-14.

xxiii Meserve 1982, 74.

xxiv Kish 1978, 207-210.

xxv Polo 1911, 329-348.

xxvi Lehti 1993, 86.

xxvii Ibid., 89-90.

xxviii Osserman 1997, 37.

31

xxix Cohen 1992, 61.

xxx Robe 1972, 44.