Meaning of 「位置の平等」は難しい。

Question

It's from line 14: https://www.docdroid.net/847v2dg/img-20170413-0001-new.pdf.html 「位置の平等」は難しい。 Literally, I'd translate the stuff in bold as "The equality of situation". Does the whole sentence then mean that its difficult to establish equality for every situation? In this case, the expression in bold could be translated as "situatitive equality" maybe?

It's not that this small phrase would be hard for me to understand grammatically, but I feel very unsure about the meaning I should extract from it xD

Answer 1

平等 here is fairness. 「位置の平等」は難しい means It's difficult to position a country while being fair to every other.

I think the idea that the author tries to convey is a bit strange but why not? People from the northern hemisphere are those who used maps first and they placed their countries above those of the southern hemisphere. That is not fair to those in the southern hemisphere. Why should they be below the northern hemisphere?

So to please everybody, why not have North and South swapped around with East and West. Then, Africa is above and Latin America is below. That's not fair either.

What should we do? Nothing. Just accept that a choice of representation has been done in your stead and lament the fact that 「位置の平等」は難しい .