The Psychology of Cartography

Since embarking on my GIS studies, I have encountered a number of map enthusiast websites (StrangeMaps, FlowingData, MapOfStrange) as well as map-enthusiast books (just bought this one, and really enjoying it), and have found that my own nascent map-geekery consciousness has been awakened.  I always had a sort of fondness for maps (not to mention an eerie ability to fold them properly, and an associated contempt for those who can/do not), which has become a full-blown mania.  Finding a number of people who are self-described "map geeks" has made me wonder about the psychological effect of maps.


I find that in myself-- and I cannot, at least in this regard, believe that I am unique-- the presence of maps results in a sense of comfort, of control, of protection from the Unknown.  Maps allow us to become godlike, to view the whole of our landscape from a dispassionate birds-eye perspective, above the fray, above the struggle and morass of crowded cities and hostile wilderness alike.  Even the terrifying creatures depicted on the edges of the map (Here be dragons!) suggest by comparison that safety is augured within the plotted territory.  The only true danger lies in the unexplored realms.

We all know, things only really went bad once Mike threw away the map.
This country girl, for one, was more upset that they crossed the stream, and did not follow it.

Following a rather painful series of trials in my life, some years ago, I found myself coping by becoming immersed in mathematics, specifically actuarial statistics, a far cry from the artistic world in which I had been involved.  If I could only reduce life's passions, tribulations, and tragedies to discrete points of data, if I could reduce that data to an equation, maybe I could find a sort of balance in chaos.  Of course, it was a fool's errand, if an enjoyable one.  Now I find myself immersed in a world of maps, of cartography, of dispassionate analysis.  While I was brought to this program by the sensible notion of learning a marketable skill, I have to wonder if I am also attempting to once again find reason and order within the uncharted.  Are indeed, we all-- do cartographers think of themselves as somehow lost?