When I was in elementary school, companies like Scholastic used to set up shop biannually in our school library and host a book fair. At these fairs, I procured many 1990s kids classics, like the Magic Eye series and The Kids' Book of Insults. Being an avid young player of Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? for the computer, I also purchased The Harper Collins World Atlas at one of these fairs. Like any good product of the American public schooling system, I had no clue where, say, Jakarta was on a map.

Since then, I have always been captivated by maps; I can literally sit and study them for hours. Opening up Google Earth on my computer is a dangerous impediment to my productivity, allowing me to indulge in stationary jet-setting on a whim. Novelty aside, looking at maps also reminds me of the world's vastness, so easy to ignore in the insular United States.

My favorite continent to study in my National Geographic College Atlas is Asia. It is not really a particular interest in Asian cultures (though that is extremely important right now) driving my fascination, but that Asia is the most misrepresented/ underrepresented/poorly represented continent in the world. It may sound idiotic, but seeing where different nations are in relation to one another always blows my mind.

Take Mongolia, for instance. You probably have not thought about Mongolia very much, yet it is the bridge between two of the most volatile forces in the entire world--China and Russia. Its territory is fairly vast considering its tiny population (not even 3 million people in 2005), larger than any country in Western Europe. I suppose the land is far too treacherous and cold to become a bustling population center, even if it can be exploited for minerals.


And while I am talking about Russia, look how HUGE it is. Of course, large swathes of land are totally unpopulated (frostbite is quite a deterrent, I guess). Still, though, when I look at Russia, or Kazakhstan, or Iran, which are all enormous countries, I think about how reductive the rhetoric of the news is. When I am listening to reports about UN meetings or other negotiations between diplomats, I am always slightly disconcerted by the use of nations as pronouns. When a reporter says, "Russia did this" or "Iraq did this," what does that even mean?

I know that for my part, I would like to create as much distance as possible between my own views and the actions of American elected and appointed officials. When, under orders of the administration., American delegates refuse to heed the rest of the world's calls to action on global warming, I would like to think that I am entirely separate from the "America" present on the world stage. Nationhood is such a problematic way of characterizing people and politics because it shoves so many different people and cultures and world views under one misleading moniker.

To return to a moment to the maps, Russia and China are so very close. When we hear Russia in the United States, we think of communism, we think of the Kremlin, we think of Vladimir Putin and Sputnik. But there are so many ethic groups and languages and histories that are all but ignored by the eternally incomplete label of "Russia." Nation-states create war in that they allow us to extract the human element from power struggles.

I hope one day that we can transcend this and appreciate the world without restrictive compartments.