East is West?

East and West became names to cause anyone not living in Uzbekistan to not think in terms of compass points. Here’s how to reason it.

Long ago, our planet Earth stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. Earth, the earth part of Earth, spanned from China to Europe. Those were wonderful days, an era when sailors would sail over the edge if they ventured too far. Sailors had lots of excitement in their lives, with all kinds of sea monsters on their maps of old along with other imaginables.

There are people today who still know they’ll fall over the edge if they go too far, or encounter marvelous monsters of the seas. These people are the cousins of the ones who live under the surface of the Earth, the hollow space between what we, you and I, know generally as Earth’s Mantle, between the crust and the core.

The Flats are the people whose world is, well, flat. It may be a disk or square, or undefined and irregular, I don’t kmow. The remarkable feature of their earth is that there are edges to the ocean over which an unwary navigator can sail. And there are places not at the ocean’s edge, like Like Niagra Falls, where one can be floated over the edge if you get too close! Their world must spin, which would be proper for something flat, but a flat earth couldn’t rotate as that motion would make it become spherical. Plain and flat, their world.

The Flats, with nothing over the edge of their world, may not subscribe to the notion of round things orbiting other things like the Sun. It may be that acknowledging all the round things out & up there, like planets, may dispel their flat. But the Hollows have a space, complete with stars & things in their sky under the Earth Crust you & I know.

The Hollows have their own space, like an airtight bubble, encased below this world familiar to you and me. The Hollows are the folk who live in the center of the earth. This is where goblins, elves and leprechans are born and die. When their sons are fathered by mere mortals (female Hollows entice earthly men), their offspring are expunged to the surface of UpHere to talk about the Hollows on late night programs.

The FlatEarthers and HollowEarthers are either living in peace never seeing each other, or are Earth’s Hatfield & McCoys (Flats&Hollows). Maybe they occupy different parallel universes for some other planet. I’ll go with the former. It’s friendlier.

Imagine, for a moment, the peaceful convergence of the Flats&Hollows on earth:
Space, as we know it, presents problems for Flats&Hollows. Dispel the notion that man has been as far as the moon, or even the Earth’s stratosphere, so we can be in the Flats&Hollows where east and west aren’t necessary.

Flats live without benefit of direction as each direction leads over the edge. The compass of a Hollow, if he had one, would wear itself out pointing to the north above the crust, above Hollow’s outer space beneath the crust. Flats&Hollows were prominent contributers to the navigation of the DarkAges, before the discovery of the United States. This is why China is East, to our west and Europe is West, to our east.

Now, back to our peaceful Flats&Hollows earth, who have no need of compass.

For the Flats, this world doesn’t exist below the crust. There is no crust, really, as crust would imply something below. It’s just flat earth, to the Flats. So the waters of the oceans, from the Pacific going westward to the Altantic, encase earth’s continents. The waters flow over the edge and are recycled underneath. Life remains flat.

On, or I should say down, to the Hollows earth. Create a mental picture (or look at a picture) of the atmosphere surrounding our planet. Don’t worry about getting the spheres in the right order, just picture the space from your feet to about where the moon is. (Beyond this point and way out where Cassini is exploring, & beyond, is too much distance to include in the mantle as their space needs to fit in Our Earth’s core.) Then look at the soild earth below whatever you’re standing on, and think of its depth. (Remember when in Kansas we pondered if we could dig a hole clear to China?)

Beyond my comprehension, the Hollows fit something like the world you and I know, including Space, in the inner area of earth we know generally as Mantle.

But, I continue to elude the description. I continue to avoid thinking of it, really. This Flats&Hollows earth has no bottom.

Sandwich this: On the top: Flat Earth, with her oceans and seas, and ships of fools, cascading over the edge
Center:  Hollow Earth, with Flat Earth’s water creating a curtain of water all around the edges, sustaining the bubble beneath the crust where the Hollows love
Bottom: Well, Hollows must have a bottom, musn’t they?

Now that I think about it, Hollows must have also been flat, or Flats really round.

The Flats&Hollows, I think, were the first to call the East, Asia and West, Europe. Marco Polo & his kin in the 13th century saw more profit in East meaning China, where fortunes were made in fine extravagances. The West was good for the setting sun. The Orient was to die for, but the Occident was lost.
East and West came around before US. We in US need to regard the distinction between the place that is East and direction that is east. We know, too, that the place West is not in the direction, west.
This brings me to the reason directions on the Hawaiian Islands aren’t confusing. If we fly west, we’ll go to the East so we just say Asia. The US is part of the West, going east, so we just say Mainland. We know which direction is windward, mauka or makai. We save east and west to confuse the tourists who don’t know Ewa from DiamondHead.

Pau!

I wrote this to get The West being to our east, and vice versa, out of the absurd arena of my thoughts. Referring to The East as Asia may have been pertinent to an era when the world’s land was a single mass. (And when people cared about the rotational relation of orient to the occident.) Pertaining to US (United States) specifically, and the Americas in general, East and West do not comply with their directions. East is in the west, but east is east, but not ying and yang.

Wikipedia refers to The Orient as an antiquated term and doesn’t even give Occident its own meaning, but redirects to The Western World. This reference source is a freely-compiled one, so consider the source!

aloha!

PS. Couldn’t resist this pic from one of my favorite blogs, Strange Maps.
Check out the Square and Stationary Earth!