the map is not the territory

Your mind hides most of your thinking so you can get on with life. Furthermore, you’re too close to yourself. You can’t see the models you use to perceive the world because you’re seeing with them.

That is head start fervor come full circle; explorers have to pursue such narrowly specialized goals with such hyperefficiency that they can say what they will find before they look for it.

A map is only one story. It is not the most important story. The most important story is the one a people tell about themselves. •

Maps are a polite fiction. They never tell the whole story. They don’t mark important things, like graves or genocides.