What if the world was flat? Forget Columbus for a minute. Certainly you should forget Magellan.
In the flat world gravity would have a different effect so the people and animals and "things" would also have to be two dimensional. In effect, everyone would be like an upright, walking stingray. Or one of those card board cut out Bill Clinton or George W. Bush figurines that the tourist photographers always seem to have in plentiful supply in Washington, DC.
The flat world would have lots of problems: there wouldn’t be any airplanes and people would have to get around on the backs of flat donkeys.
Of course everybody in the flat world would be nostalgic for the 3D earth except for American school children who wouldn’t be affected. The blackboard would be the same. The teachers would still be there.
Since flat people can only move sideways Congress wouldn’t be affected.
Wars would be much harder to fight. Soldiers would have to throw razor blade Frisbees like that guy in the old James Bond film. And of course because people could only move sideways, throwing the Frisbee would be a matter of "blind luck".
As a creative writing teacher I sometimes tell my students that too much imagination can hurt a human being. In general we tend to opine that there isn’t enough imagination in our world.
But human imagination is often perilous. There are lots of bad ideas in the imagination’s house of horrors including eugenics, slavery, child labor, and the assembly line.
I’m no socialist. Don’t take me the wrong way. A flat world would likely have its own social inequities. In a flat world the really thin people would be the most powerful ones because they could get around faster. And there would be no incentive to develop your soul. (The soul is round according to all the world’s religions.)
There wouldn’t be any music in a flat world. If you need proof, Joseph Stalin’s favorite record was a 78 rpm recording of wolves.
Now I need more "roundness". I need to put my hands on a sculpture by Brancusi. I need to clutch a chestnut in my hand.
Stay balanced, my friends, stay balanced.
(Balance, by the way, is a requirement in both the flat world and in the round one.)
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 
Perhaps, we still partially live on that flat world of our past. In that flat world, flat taxes would seem perfectly reasonable. Moreover, one could never really have a rounded discussion since all issues would have only two sides.
Our flat ancestors could only dream of added dimensions. However, their dreams could only resemble paper.
Wishing the best for both of you and your new home in Iowa,
Boyd
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That’s interesting; I hadn’t thought of imagination that way. I have to wonder if it couldn’t also be said that a *lack* of creative/imaginative thinking is what leads to horrors.
I suggest that in part because a strong imagination (guided by information) is what drives empathy for others unlike ourselves, and it also takes guided imagination to then use that empathy to solve problems in new, innovative, positive ways. (Eugenics isn’t imaginative: it’s just applying to humans the same process people have long used for breeding animals. It takes more imagination to find ways to change society to include, value, and care for the “undesirable” people/animals as a normal part of the population.)
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“Stay balanced, my friends, stay balanced.”
Such a constant struggle.
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