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"A number of years ago I was
conducting a seminar for government managers at a
conference site in West Virginia. We shared the facility
with a small international conference, whose
participants had met the year before in Geneva, the year
before that in Paris. Here they were in the lovely hills
of West Virginia but already they were promoting their
next year's meeting in Alice Springs, Australia. The
Australian contingent had posted a map on the door of
their main meeting room - McArthur's Universal
Corrective Map of the World. It attempted to correct the
old Mercator projection of the world that was so
familiar to all of us. It showed the South on top, with
Australia in the center of the map. The map read, in
part, "South is superior. South dominates! Long live
AUSTRALIA - RULER OF THE UNIVERSE!!" Our group of
managers chuckled over that, but also engaged in a
spirited discussion of perceptions, world views, and the
importance of - at least occasionally - seeing things
differently. I left the seminar with the humbling
knowledge that the discussion about McArthur's map was
the-best learning of the week." Ron Rago, GTN |
