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 headshaking 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-themud of tomorrow.
I hope this journey through the history of human conservatism is an enjoyable and enlightening 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. Although 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 always 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 improvements at work. “Development” and “improvement” could mean practically anything. EU bureaucrats had a hard time winning the vote for the European constitution because no one can understand 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 papers on our desk without asking. Our system, no matter how nebulous it may seem to the outsider, 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 nevertheless 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 begins. 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 typists – that is, those who were right-handed.
The reason for this peculiar idea was the efficiency of the people using the machine: typists were causing the most popular letters to jam by typing them too quickly, and the manufacturers 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 unchanging sets of rules in history was the guild system. In the Middle Ages, guilds determined the quality, 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 prison. 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 outside 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 Revolution, 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 quicker 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 falsified 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 exceptional cases. Most of the time, the world measures itself with its own ruler, rather than its neighbor’s. That’s why cars continue to move in the same direction, but do so in opposite lanes on opposite sides of the English Channel. It’s why a billion is a thousand million in Britain and a million 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 nation.
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 invented the lightning rod and proved that lightning is a form of electricity, he quite correctly deduced 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 furious at the Americans for their revolution, so he had round-ended and thus, to his mind, indubitably 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 centimeters.
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 dominance 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 sufficiently 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 impossible 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 comfortable, 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 people 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 defend 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, living 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 organization, 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 agitation 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 synaptic 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. Children and youths are open to new ideas. The synapses in their brains haven’t yet had time to become 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 cognitive dissonance. The term refers to the idea that people only want to know about things that correspond 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 dangerous 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 father-in-law strive to avoid open conflict, and conversations over coffee are almost entirely devoted 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 Chinese 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 Kingdom (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 agriculture 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 agriculturalists 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 inhabitants 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 familiar 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. According 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 barbara 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 amusing dialects, or deaf, because they can’t understand our language. The Slavs’ name for the Germanic people meant “unable to speak”. The Maya of Central America called members of neighboring 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 uncivilized 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 people, 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 monsters made their way onto European maps. Once European mapmakers had decided that the edges 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 preferred 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 Mandeville’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 beliefs 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.
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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 managing 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 located in the exact center. For such a person, which direction would be up, and which down? Which direction 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 Hartmann Schedel’s 1493 Nürnberg Chronicle.
In Columbus’s time, the learned had good reason to believe that the world was round. Nevertheless, 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 oceanic 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 Giuliano Dati included an authoritative depiction of no less than eight types of monsters encountered in Amer-
26
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 impossible 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.
27
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Aristotle (1991): Politiikka (Politics). Translated by A.M. Anttila. Gaudeamus, Jyväskylä.
Bang, Gustav (1926): Euroopan sivistyshistoria. Vanha ja keskiaika (A History of European Civilization: Ancient and Medieval Periods). Translated by O.A.Forsström. WSOY, Porvoo.
Bohm, David & F. David. Peat (1992): Tiede, järjestys ja luovuus (Science, Order and Creativity). Translated by Tiina Seppälä, Jukka Jääskeläinen and Paavo Pylkkänen. Gaudeamus, Helsinki.
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.
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Hollo. WSOY, Juva.
Järvinen, Pekka (1999): Esimiestyö ongelmatilanteissa – konfliktien luomat haasteet työyhteisössä. WSOY, Porvoo.
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Lehti, Raimo (1993): Antiikin maailmankuvasta löytöretkiin. From Imago Mundi. Ihmisen ja tieteen uudet maailmat, ed. Raimo Lehti & Jan Rydman. WSOY, Porvoo.
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XVI, 51-89.
28
Osserman, Robert (1997): Kosmoksen runous. Maailmankaikkeuden matemaattinen tutkimus
(Poetry of the Universe: A Mathematical Exploration of the Cosmos). Translated by Kimmo
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29
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.
30
xxix
Cohen 1992, 61.
xxx
Robe 1972, 44.
31