What makes North "north"?

When cartographer Gerardus Mercator developed the Mercator Projection in 1569, he designed a cylindrical map projection with parallel east west lines to facilitate marine voyages from Europe. But, as we have discussed in class, this projection distorts the size and shape of every location on the globe -- and even their positions.

As the fictional character Dr Don Fallows tells White House staffers CJ Craig and Josh Lyman on this clip from The West Wing, because of the Mercator Projection and its distortions, "Nothing is where you think it is." The Mercator Projection distortion does more than offer a confusing and incorrect view of the world, it implicates issues of social justice by allowing the First World -- North America and Europe -- to appear bigger, and therefore more important that other less favored world areas. "In our society we unconciously equate size with importance and ecven power," explains Fallows.

The cartograpohers in this episode argue for another kind of map, one which is more accurate as to size, shape, and location. It is called the Peters Projection.
It really exists, and it looks like this:
















But wait, there's more.

The top-and-bottom orientation makes the Northern hemisphere -- where the First World is -- seem primary, elevated, and exalted, while the places in the Southern Hemisphere -- the African, South American and Asian Second and Third World are, well, on the "bottom" of the world. In truth, of course, neither is more accurate than the other. On a spinning planet which revolves around a star in a universe which has no top-and-bottom orientation, what -- other than the cultural egotism of the countries which decided -- makes North "north"???