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> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ This, of course, is the point of the article. It was so predictabl
by hyperhello 1y ago
> Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’
This, of course, is the point of the article. It was so predictable that it made me wonder: who is telling me that top is good and lower is bad? The articles themselves.
- nomdep 1y agoAnd the follow up question: why the author want to flip the map to see the countries at the top as bad and the lower ones as good?
- hidroto 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South
- alabhyajindal 1y agoFirst time seeing this and it feels so offensive. I'm somewhat okay with the term developed and developing countries, though not too much [1]. But this just feels discriminatory. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factfulness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factfulness
- micromacrofoot 1y agoit is discriminatory, though that wasn't the original intention
- incr_me 1y agoOffensive how? "Developing" and "things aren't so bad" are offensive because they obfuscate imperialist relations. That's the position of the theorists who use "Global North"/"South", anyway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South#Theories_explaining_the_divide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_North_and_Global_South#... What do you mean by discriminatory?
- alabhyajindal 1y agoI haven't read the link you posted because I want to expand on my initial reaction. A layman who is not familiar with the reasons behind Global North/South would not think about imperialist relations. I'm somewhat okay with "developing" because the term is easier to understand: some countries are less developed than others. Plus the terms are fluid. If a country becomes developed enough then they switch labels. Global North/South makes no sense at all, again from a layman's perspective. From the original story: > Psychologically, we tend to view things nearer the top as ‘good’ and those lower as ‘bad.’ When I see Australia in the southern hemisphere being characterised as "North", I think that the creator of this term is discriminating against countries they consider inferior. There is no room for growth here. A country being characterised as "South" will always be as such, because intuitively we know we can't switch geographies.
- incr_me 1y agoRight, in my experience it's a distinction that's offensive to the "Northern" camp that thinks about the disparity in terms of each country's independent "growth"/"progress"/development". It also offends "would-be Northerners", i.e. comprador/petty bourgeois individuals located geographically in the "South", for similar reasons. To complicate matters, dependency theorists were themselves petty bourgeois apologists of the Non-Aligned Movement. It's just that times have changed, just like how "American Indian" is preferred by the older generation because "Native" and "Indigenous" are impositions of liberalism, even though the newer generation may prefer the latter labels. Personally I don't care what language is being used as long as the real conditions are being brought to light. Persecutory investigations into psychology on these matters are dead ends. The successful adoption of "Native" and "developing" did not liberate.
- rendx 1y ago> I'm somewhat okay with "developing" because the term is easier to understand: some countries are less developed than others. Plus the terms are fluid. If a country becomes developed enough then they switch labels. "Developing" what, and to what end? The term itself sounds absolute, where in fact it implies a relative order, but doesn't give away what (arbitrary) properties you include in the comparison. Take Gross National Happiness or the Happy Planet Index, for example. You could very well call countries with a low but slowly rising GNH "developing countries". USA is 122/152 in the HPI, which sounds about right, and probably not "developing" but declining. The point is that the imperial West defines what is "good" and "bad", and from that point of reference uses terminology that implies an absoluteness; as another example, as if "long life" is a universal goal of humanity, when in fact other cultures prioritize community over individuals. (There's no point in valuing a "long life" when you believe in reincarnation.) To discriminate between developed and developing countries also means you assume some countries are somewhat "finished" where others can play "catch up", which is not how global economies actually work: Capitalism requires winners and losers. I come, rob your house, take away most of what you have, and call you "savage". I then give you "development aid", telling you how to spend it and make you dependent on my services and "assistance", calling you "developing". How does that feel? Are we interacting on eye level, or am I looking down on you?
- bregma 1y agoWhat are "developing" countries developing into? Nice white western ones like the global north? Nope. That one is the worst of the choices.
- alabhyajindal 1y agoI said "somewhat okay" in my original comment to mean developing/developed classification is better than the Global North/South. Not that it's good or should be widely used. I wanted to communicate that even that bad classification is "better" than Global North/South which I'm hearing about today for the first time.
- carlosjobim 1y agoThey are "developing" into industrialized countries.
- andsoitis 1y ago> What are "developing" countries developing into? Nice white western ones like the global north? Nope. That one is the worst of the choices. The way to think about it is along economic, social, and infra/tech dimensions, and are not coupled to culture or ethnicity (your "white western"). Specifically, developing countries: - Economic: low income, underdeveloped industry - Social: lower quality of life, limited access to basic services (jobs, food, clean water, education, healthcare, housing) - Infra/tech: poor infrastructure, limited access to technology Furthermore, the following countries in Europe ("white") can be considered developing: Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, etc. while Japan is not developing (and not "white western"). Some countries have a high HDI (e.g. in Africa you can think of Algeria, Egypt, South Africa, Morocco, Botswana, etc.) but can still be considered developing on other dimensions. In the Middle East, counties like Qatar, UAE, Israel, Kuwait, and Bahrain can be considered developed (and not "white western").
- simonh 1y agoThey’re becoming developed like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore.
- hollerith 1y agoDo you live in a white western country? If so, do you have a plan for emigrating? If you've no plan, why not?
- YurgenJurgensen 1y agoDon’t bother trying to learn the new shibboleths. By the time the majority has accepted them, they’ll be outdated and the progressives will have moved onto another set. Before ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ we had ‘first world’ and ‘third world’.
- Starman_Jones 1y agoWe didn't, though! At least, not for that purpose. When India's PM Nehru said to the UN, "We are the third world," it was a profound statement that had absolutely nothing to do with economics. "Developing" and "developed" were introduced to the public conscious as a desperate attempt to stop the ignorant masses (including, at one point, me) from ruining a useful descriptor.
- 542354234235 1y agoFirst World were countries aligned with the United States, Second World were countries aligned with the Soviet Union, and Third World were countries who were "neutral" or not aligned with either major superpower. Many Third World countries were newly independent, and were economically struggling but also wanted to assert sovereignty. Many were given aid packages to attempt to court them to one side or the other. The terms are outdated because of reality, not because of "progressives".
- thw_9a83c 1y agoSuch grouping is based on dubious theories. For example, China is classified as a "developing economy" (red), even though it is one of only three countries with the independent capability to send humans into Earth's orbit using its own launch systems and spacecraft.
- gowld 1y agoChina (and India) are near the border, which is creeping downward as nations develop economically. Australia is the funny one.
- Legend2440 1y agoChina has had massive economic growth in recent years, but were undisputedly a developing country prior to that growth. They may deserve to be reclassified now, although their GDP per capita is still much lower than the US.
- simonh 1y agoOnly because their population is so huge. Their Dollar GDP is about 2/3 that of the USA and is 4.5x that of Japan. In a sense it’s set of highly developed urban industrial zones that also has a massive underdeveloped rural area.
- freefrog334433 1y agoGDP PPP is being used to compare countries productivity more often now. Australia has high GDP but low productivity as most is sunk into expensive, unproductive real estate. Every country has their rust belts and undeveloped rural areas.
- smsm42 1y agoAnd that's why it is called "developing" - because some parts are developed but some are massively underdeveloped.
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- tintor 1y agoHow is Australia part of Global North? :)
- decimalenough 1y agoNorth is 0-127, South is 128-255. When you go south enough, the 8-bit counter overflows and that's how Australia becomes North. Alternatively, "Global North" is just code for "white", with a few apartheid-style token "honorary whites" like Japan added. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_whites https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_whites
- koyote 1y agoThat is such an odd list. I also love that Singapore is both 'developing' on this list and int the Small Island Developing States list, despite it easily being in the top 10 of most developed countries in the world.
- shirro 1y agoYep, living in a de-industrialised, undiversified economy, second most southern in the global north I can only wish by kids had access to a Singaporean education. Regional politics is complicated. Australia needs to be in the ASEAN group. We have common interests in regional security and stability and have complementary capabilities and resources. But its convenient to label us as outsiders and characterise us as imperialists or American agents (which sadly we sort of are but give us some options). Doesn't matter that we are right here and 20% of our population originated from the asian countries to the north of us. For some reason we are on the imperialist side.
- davidczech 1y agoI'd bet a lot of this behavior is heavily correlated with how we generally read top to bottom, which is in itself, probably an arbitrary decision made by ancient text writers.
- vman81 1y agoWriting top to bottom, and even left to right has/had advantages for mostly right-handed writers to avoid moving your hand over and smudging previously written text.
- mitthrowaway2 1y agoHow would top-to-bottom benefit right-handed writers any more than left-handed ones?
- hyperhello 1y agoAnd why would that make the top better than the bottom anyway? That's like saying the meal is worse after you finish it.
- roarcher 1y agoTop to bottom advantages everyone. Left to right advantages the right-handed. Right handed being the majority, top to bottom and left to right wins in almost every writing system.
- InitialLastName 1y agoWriting top-to-bottom has advantages for all writers whose eyes are above their hands. The bit of the writing surface that's blocked by your hand hasn't been written on yet.
- y-curious 1y agoThey link this[1] article, which I don't plan to read. I, too, rolled my eyes. 1: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550611401042 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/194855061140104...
- dvt 1y agoI read it and their methodology is embarassingly bad, especially for the kind of study that can be done en masse so easily (heck, a Twitter poll would be more useful). N=28, where all were undergraduates, and 24 were women. Could easily be influenced by the college campus, location, student housing, etc. It's literally the kind of project you'd do in middle school for a science fair. Absolutely terrible study. Full paper is here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258189192_Spatial_Metaphor_and_Real_Estate_North-South_Location_Biases_Housing_Preference https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258189192_Spatial_M...
- Affric 1y agoThis is always done. Studies of American college students to prove some sort of universal rule about human psychology. There’s embarrassing papers that get published in every field but social sciences is where they always try and put a moralistic element in as well. Sigh.
- alwa 1y agoI mean, and.. with the map South-up, all the stuff is crammed down at the bottom now, no? Aren’t most of the people and land and things in the North part? A casual Google [0] suggests 88% of the humans, for example? I don’t understand the “good” and “bad” thing, but it does make sense to me that you scan something “earlier” or “later” in casting your eye across a mass of stuff. If we read from top to bottom… doesn't it make sense to put the part where the stuff is earlier in order than the part with mainly oceans? It makes slightly more sense to me to argue about which continental masses should go on the left or the right of the map, e.g. [1]. Although compositionally, if you put the Eurasian continent on the left side (“first” for left-to-right readers), doesn’t the massive Pacific exaggerate the impression of a discontinuity or a vast gap between geographical clusters of humans? [0] https://brilliantmaps.com/human-hemisphere/#:~:text=88%25%20of%20humanity%20lives%20in%20the%20Northern%20Hemisphere. https://brilliantmaps.com/human-hemisphere/#:~:text=88%25%20... [1] https://www.mapresources.com/products/world-digital-vector-raster-terrain-map-miller-955326 https://www.mapresources.com/products/world-digital-vector-r...
- bobsmooth 1y ago>I don’t understand the “good” and “bad” thing The author has an inferiority complex.
- bandie91 1y agothe author wants to reinforce the lower instinct in people around the world of being tribal rivals toward each other across heavily averaged-out economic indicators in the geographically northern and southern regions of the globe.
- schoen 1y agoAt one point a character in Eco's Foucault's Pendulum says "archetypes don't exist, the body exists" and then gives some sexual and reproductive examples, followed by > And high is better than low, because if you have your head down, the blood goes to your brain, because feet stink and hair doesn’t stink as much, because it’s better to climb a tree and pick fruit than end up underground, food for worms, and because you rarely hurt yourself hitting something above—you really have to be in an attic—while you often hurt yourself falling. That’s why up is angelic and down devilish. You could also argue that because of gravity and potential energy, up is usually the result of purposive action and effort, while down is often the result of accident or neglect ("you often hurt yourself falling"). That potential energy (and wide-open space) can also be used for maneuvering, so if two people or other creatures are fighting, one who is higher is generally at an advantage compared to one who is lower or lying on the ground. The lower party has less energy available to direct toward the opponent, and usually less room to move, being more constrained by the presence of the ground.
- hobs 1y ago> so if two people or other creatures are fighting, one who is higher is generally at an advantage compared to one who is lower or lying on the ground Tell that to a BJJ fighter.
- ghurtado 1y agoOnly an Anakin Skywalker vs Royce Gracey fight can settle this question once and for all.
- gowld 1y agoI'll send the message via DJI drone.
- DwnVoteHoneyPot 1y agoBJJ fighters still think higher up is an advantage. Body weight to press down on opponent, greater freedom of movement.
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- paxys 1y agoReally? Before you read this article you never associated being on top = good and being at the bottom = bad?
- blueflow 1y agoProbably as kid, but at some point in maturing you learn that what you consider good/bad is your own prejudice and working off that is going to cause social troubles.
- themaninthedark 1y agoI'm going to catch a movie downtown, about a plucky underdog from one of the Low Countries, NETHERland in particular.
- bromuro 1y agoDoesn’t the meaning of a word depend from its context ? Why the bottom of a map should be “bad”?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- notmyjob 1y agoHeaven and hell, not hell and heaven. The stock market goes up as spirits rise.
- rafram 1y agoStarted at the bottom, now we're here. Up-and-coming. Top-of-the-line. I could go on, but I don't want to get you down.
- staplers 1y agoOur eyes are at the top of our body and humans are generally tall (standing up). You look forward and then look down naturally. We generally read top down because of this. We generally want the bulk of information at the same level as our eyes. It's why tv's aren't on the ground. I feel like many are overthinking this.
- abtinf 1y agoThose who claim the top is viewed as good by most people would also have to defend the claim that most people are Alaskan supremacists.
- Rebelgecko 1y agoThey're subservient to Santa, who is the uppermost
- kens 1y agoI highly recommend the book "Metaphors We Live By", which discusses how metaphors are not arbitrary, but are part of schemas. For instance, there are whole classes of orientational metaphors that fall into the schemas: "more is up, less is down", "good is up, bad is down", "virtue is up, depravity is down", "rational is up, emotional is down", "having control is up, being subject to control is down", and so on. (Yes, I'm sure you're clever enough to find counterexamples.) This is a thought-provoking book that changed how I view the world, so check it out. The book: https://archive.org/details/lakoff-george-metaphors-we-live-by_202508/page/14/mode/2up?view=theater https://archive.org/details/lakoff-george-metaphors-we-live-... Norvig's review discussing the book in the context of AI: https://norvig.com/mwlb.html https://norvig.com/mwlb.html
- dingaling 1y ago[flagged]
- ash_091 1y agoI spent a solid ten minutes researching this and couldn't find any suggestion that there's any problem with the title. Could you explain how it's ungrammatical?
- cgh 1y agoThere’s an outdated rule in English that states you shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. It dates back to a time when writers applied Latin’s grammatical rules to English. It’s mostly ignored now.
- tomsmeding 1y agoBut... it's a title, not a sentence. Many book titles are even a single word, which is even less a sentence. Why would a grammatical convention for sentences apply to book titles?
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- blargey 1y agoAre you feeling down, or are things looking up for you? Do you have people to look up to, or do you spend more time looking down on others? Are you on top of the world, or working your way up from the bottom? Etc, etc. It's suffused throughout our language, and not just this one language, either.
- t-3 1y agoIt's wrong in any case. The center is the most important part.
- blauditore 1y agoAre you African by any chance?
- t-3 1y agoNope just an American old enough to remember real physical paper maps. You don't put the most important part on the edge. (I believe the Chinese also use "central" to describe the leader or foremost member of a group though. It's fascinating to think about how language might unconsciously influence behavior)
- bandie91 1y agothere is no concept of "center" in the up-down paradigm discussed here. there IS center in other directionality-related abstractions however. like the center of the city, or the axis of the wheel, a centerpiece of an artwork. but the center-perimeter paradigm is very similar to the up-down one. if you want to put those 2 together you will get the vision of the mountain of which center is on the top, and its perimeter is at the bottom.
- themaninthedark 1y agoIt's up in the air, I could be High as a kite!
- Leszek 1y agoAre you down for looking for counterexamples? Do you want to get to the bottom of why people cherry pick examples for their argument? Is this what you want to base your argument on, or should it be grounded in a more complete linguistic analysis?
- MangoToupe 1y agoOut of curiosity, why do you think humanity tends to read from top down? We do have inherent bias living in a world with gravity. Though such bias may be subtle, and any attempts to evince deep meaning futile, it is nevertheless present.
- vladms 1y agoI think might have more to do with the ink getting wiped/mangled when the first books were written. Even today, if I would be to fill a page bottom to up while writing with an ink pen, I would probably make some mess of the text already written. Same reason for writing left to right probably (given someone that writes with the right, but that seems to be more common).
- MangoToupe 1y agoPerhaps! Then why do any societies write right to left?
- vladms 1y agoI don't know the distribution of people using left or right across the world and how it is determined. It might be even close to 50% everywhere in early infancy, but once one "main direction" emerged at society level (by luck - like there were 4 people writing in that direction versus 2 in the other), maybe everybody is "pushed" in that direction. Anyhow it's a matter of trade-offs and each society ended up with different ones - I mean direction I find least controversial, think of Chinese and Ancient Egyptian scripts that are logographic - why did they end up with that? We can also analyze if some convention makes sense or not and why, even if the initial decision was taken for the "wrong" (or some irrational) reasons (ex: the village priest heard a voice).
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 1y agoThere is the term "global south", but 90% of the poor countries that are considered part of the global south are actually north of the equator. Its only really western Europe that is abnormally north to give such a skewed perspective.