5794 - The dynamic maps

N. Lygeros
Translation: Paola Vagioni

When we examine traditional maps, everything seems static. We look at the framework and we do not see the field of action while we know that there are players. We study the maps we know and we are looking at them, in the way we want to see them. In other words, the traditional maps blind us because they are just mirrors that we created ourselves.

We still preserve inside us reflexes of past times where maps weren’t representing reality but instead were reality itself and where we marked our willpower. In consequence, traditional maps remain dogmatic because they display the data that we introduce. In other words, they are not studies in a scientific sense but only political stratagems with which the strong are imposed. All that remains for the weak is to examine older maps and nostalgically remember the past in which they once played a part.

The other problem that we locate with these traditional maps, is the lack of dynamic factors since they are only territorial and indeed geometrical. The main repercussion of this property is that time does not exist. Thus traditional maps are meaningful only to bigger countries while smaller ones barely have enough space for surviving on the edge. Over the years, for these small countries, strategy is even more diplomatic and diplomacy is even less strategic.

A theoretical way to tackle this approach is to integrate elements not only of geostrategy but also of topostrategy. The use of the combination of geometry and topology, creates a dynamic field of action. Since topology is not involved with distances but studies relations instead, it is capable of seeing entities that we do not usually look at, because relations produce graphs which allow us to function structurally with group theory. Without going into technical details however, we can illustrate some elements of our new approach.

The dynamic maps allow the amalgamation of traditional maps in time. The dynamic maps live within space-time and not just space. This capacity gives us the possibility to study even smaller space structures. Moreover it allows us to promote the idea that small countries can also have access to grand strategy as long as they exist over time, because for these, the space of resistance is time. They cannot remain anywhere else without having grave repercussions. This means that the dynamic maps are not only compulsory for small countries, but they are capable of creating a field of action even for diplomacy because it gives the time for managing the crisis.

These maps do not try to pretend that there aren’t any problems. On the contrary, they promote them in order to resolve them. As in strategy, they do the impossible for the possible. It is not enough for them to do the possible for the impossible. The dynamic maps use the knowledge of mathematics, not for creating complex situations but for resolving complex problems that are presented as peaceful conditions that are nothing else except new facts for the preparation of a war situation. The existence of these small countries is of a warlike nature. Peace is a luxury for the big ones. This is what the dynamic maps promote. The questioning that they raise is the awareness of our role inside time.