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The International Flag of Planet Earth

flagofplanetearth.com

81–90 of 109 posts

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#81
It doesn't have an organisation or even a not-very-organized ideological movement or anything to back it up.

Thus, all the symbolism remain meaningless because practically nobody cares about it. And those who care or say so (for whatever purposes) are probably sporting UN emblems, and have been doing that for about half a century.

In reality, if the need arises, we'll use the UN org and its flag to represent Earth, if it's still around (it probably will) and security council can decide upon what to do with the aliens (no idea).

(Assuming the pessimistic but oh-so-realistic scenario, cooperation won't probably work out, so we'll probably have the majority of security council maybe waving the UN flag (if the majority is suitably overwhelming), the others waving whatever alliance symbols they bother to come up with (if at all, in the world wars just different compositions of national flags were popular in the propaganda, and that's not likely to change), and the first global civil war. After it's over and if there's still someone around to declare themselves as the winning side, the victors' flag (which will be used) will be a meaningful flag full of symbolism.)

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one is a lot more interesting, though it's basically just a map, which is atypical for flags. The OP's flag is very abstract. Presumably, any other alien race also strives for unity and lives. It's hard to create a better flag without actually knowing aliens and having some idea of commonalities and differences with humanity. Indeed, maybe we need a flag for humanity, not planet earth?

Not so atypical for recent flags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Cyprus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Kosovo

[deleted]

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#84
post #38

As with these sorts of things, I respect the academic exercise, but they always feel really arbitrary. Like, I could pick fifty different decent symbols and color schemes and come up with something that kind of looked good and might be a good Earth flag in a movie or something. If that's the goal, then the challenge isn't really that hard. If you really wanted to explore a flag for Earth, you'd engage people from aro…

If you read until the page's end, you'll see this is an undergrad school project. So, I'd guess bringing all the world's nations to consensus was out of scope.

That said, they did a wonderful job, and, as indicated by the fact this is on the front page, they have captured a world wide consensus of sorts.

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#85
post #6

This one is still my favorite: http://imgur.com/gallery/7ze3a

That is functionally a horrible design. Imagine a couple hundred solar systems. It is very likely that one will have exactly 8 planets with their 3rd planet being their home planet. And even if such a system doesn't exist, this map doesn't stand out at all. At a glance it could represent any solar system: "Hey, this map has planets and a sun. Which solar system is that? I have no idea." This introduces unnecessary confusion and possible conflicts.

Symbolic representation of a solar system is the most generic thing you can choose about a solar system. A flag should be something unique that stands out from other ones.

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#86
post #56

Having a flag for planet Earth is an oxymoron. The very purpose of a flag, and nationalism in general, is to be a symbol of a nation, and the very concept of a nation can only exist in contrast to other nations . One side of the coin can only exist because there is another side. All of Earth, considered as a whole, has nothing to compare itself to. We call the sides of a coin “heads” and “tails”, but we don’t have a…

> All of Earth, considered as a whole, has nothing to compare itself to.

Except other planets.

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#88
post #56

Having a flag for planet Earth is an oxymoron. The very purpose of a flag, and nationalism in general, is to be a symbol of a nation, and the very concept of a nation can only exist in contrast to other nations . One side of the coin can only exist because there is another side. All of Earth, considered as a whole, has nothing to compare itself to. We call the sides of a coin “heads” and “tails”, but we don’t have a…

>To contrast against this, we may need a symbol against nationalism.

The 'against-nationalism-ism' would just turn out like a nationalism. After all, it has a flag.

Just look how the International turned out when they managed something resembling of the revolution they longed after in one corner of Earth.

Re: The International Flag of Planet Earth

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one is a lot more interesting, though it's basically just a map, which is atypical for flags. The OP's flag is very abstract. Presumably, any other alien race also strives for unity and lives. It's hard to create a better flag without actually knowing aliens and having some idea of commonalities and differences with humanity. Indeed, maybe we need a flag for humanity, not planet earth?

Not so atypical for recent flags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Cyprus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Bosnia_and_Herzegovina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Kosovo

The programmer in me can't help but think about the maintenance map-based flags incur with border changes.

I have similar reservations about the US flag. :)

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