Bill Whittle at Eject! Eject! Eject! has decided to write a book. And the one line, the one thing that makes it a must read, is the title of this post.
So throughout this book, we will try as best we possibly can to stay honest about what is actual coastline, and what is merely map. Perhaps an example will prove useful:
You can say that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. I happen to believe that is largely true, although there were many elements at work. But that’s my map talking. Saying Reagan won the cold war is an assertion that I make, based on a very complex set of evidence. But I select that evidence. That’s not coastline. That’s map.
However, if I say that Capitalism defeated Communism economically in the Cold War, then I am talking coastline. Any rational person can look out the window and see that this was indeed what happened. Not only is Capitalism on the rise worldwide, but Communism is shrinking into progressively more awful failed states, and that is saying something. I can say that this is Coastline because if Soviet Communism had won, Ronald Reagan would have ended his days as a prisoner in a Siberian Gulag. That’s not what happened. What happened was that Mikhail Gorbachev appeared in a Pizza Hut commercial. I think most reasonable people would agree that that’s a win for capitalism. Coastline.
But that’s the past. Hindsight is 20/20. We can always look back at our wake and see where we have been; the challenge is to know where we are going. Predictive value would be nice. So here’s a better example of how we can use this kind of mental rigor to cut through competing maps of what is happening out in the real world.
Socialist intellectuals will tell you that Cuba is a model nation: universal free health care, near total literacy, and essentially no gap whatsoever between the rich and the poor. They call it an island paradise where brotherhood and compassion reign in stark contrast to the brutal inequalities of the heartless and racist capitalist monster to the North, ruled by its Imperial Nazi King, who is the devious mastermind of all manner of Conspiratorial Wheels and also a moron.
Capitalist intellectuals -– and there are not many, since most of these people have jobs -– argue that Cuba is a squalid, corrupt, poverty-ridden basket case, a land of oppression and secret police and torture chambers run by a megalomaniac who practices the most idiotic, inhuman and degrading economic system ever invented.
So here we sit in the chartroom, with our competing maps. What to think?
Well, ask yourself what it would take to give up your home, your country, your family and all your friends. Ask yourself how desperate you would have to be to sneak out in the night, and strap your family – your grandmother and infant son – to a collection of inner tubes lashed together and set out in the dark surf across 90 miles of shark-infested water in the dead of night, hoping against hope to make landfall. We can all agree, I think, that that kind of desperation could only be driven by fairly passionate first-person opinion of such things. Surely this goes beyond what you or I would do to win a map argument at Starbucks.
So. Go up on deck, get out the telescope, and answer one simple question for me and for yourself:
Which way are the rafts headed?
It is well worth your time to read this.
