Conversation

Replying to
For example, my story is: [India-->], Ann Arbor, Austin, Ann Arbor, Ithaca, Rochester, DC, Vegas, Seattle, LA. Or PSSRSRPPP. P= progress S=sideways R=regress
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If I make it a bit more complex and weight a leg in inverse proportion to distance from Boston-LA turnpike, I could code my Rochester-DC move as "progress" (projection moved backwards, but I got closer to the turnpike). It's a bit like doubling back to ramp onto a highway.
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In general, the topology is more complex of course. SF to Midland, TX is severe regression, but SF to Austin is more of a mild regression, with a lot of sideways. The network of major cities has its own topology, which distorts the base R^2 plane topology.
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The biggest political conflict in the US is probably between those who are invested in the current topology of the Narrative Highway System (NHS) of the US and those who think it is decay and decline.
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The American Dream, unlike Old World life scripts, has always had a very high-legibility geographic component. Indian dream scripts for example, do NOT have such a strong geographic component. There's at best a very weak "going to Bombay to join Bollywood" narrative.
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At best there is a weak, generic provinces --> big city narrative without strong bindings for particular big cities. I think this is because America only has a brief peasant history, and no old cities, so entire narrative imagination gets projected onto network of young cities.
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If I had to get all mathematical and imagine a topology for US narrative space, I'd make it a planar graph of charismatic cities, with an extra node in the middle titled "heartland" to which all of flyover country is mapped. Sounds callous, but that's really it.
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The American heartland is a trope more than a place. Specific interstices within the city graphs do not have strong identities. At best, you can decompose "heartland" into "Midwest", "Texas", "Prairies" and "Old South", and those are not intrinsic, but artifacts of global history
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Replying to
I mean specifically in the sense of relationships between great powers. The US is the result of particular boundary carvings and big trades between modern states... Louisiana Purchase, Mexican-American war etc, all in relatively recent modern history.