Political Compass, For What It’s Worth
(I’m working on a bunch of different things right now, including the rest of my Summit commentary — which is taking forever — but figured I’d post this in the meantime).
My Political Compass results:
Economic Left/Right: -4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.26
I’ve noticed that most of the people whose blogs I read tend to fall along either extreme left/democrat/socialist lines, or along libertarian lines. (I have no idea why that is, it’s just the way things seem to have worked out — but still, I am very surprised that I don’t get more comments along the lines of, “Why do you bother with anything so-and-so says? They’re one of them!”) And all of them occasionally say things I agree with, as well as things I disagree with.
The thing that frustrates me most about politics is the fact that you’re almost expected to (a) choose a side, and (b) think of the “other side” as entirely consisting of clueless people. There’s almost a kind of alarmism among the strongly partisan, as if somehow, the Other Side is going to destroy the universe with their ideology if it isn’t kept in check. I honestly don’t know if any particular party is “dangerous” — I know that there are dangerous ideas, and dangerous precedents, but it’s very difficult for me to fully embrace or write off any particular system without understanding it deeply.
I sometimes feel guilty about this, especially since some people are so emphatically convinced of how damaging Viewpoint A is, but until I’ve fully grokked why, it’s difficult for me to get fired up. (And I do get fired up about certain things — people who think that old people should be denied lifesaving medicine just because they are old, or who think that autistics “lack the essential features of being human”, or who are Nazis, will be spared no vitriol from me!)
Whatever my “compass score” says about me, I definitely plan to keep doing things as I have been all along: that is, considering individual issues as they come up and weighing them not in reference to some pre-fab party template, but against the ethical framework I’ve been developing ever since I started thinking about the world outside my own head. While I do understand the need to take “big picture” views and occasionally align with groups I may not agree with 100% in order to accomplish certain goals, overall, I find most pre-existing systems extremely limiting.
And not only are they limiting, they tend to have these huge, gaping holes that it’s difficult to get anyone to acknowledge. Like disability rights — where does that fit in? Most liberals ignore disability issues, despite being generally supportive of civil rights as they apply to women, minorities, and LGBT individuals. And though conservatives might occasionally pay lip service to “disability rights”, the arguments they use (and the bizarro agendas they tie in — “human exceptionalism” comes to mind) are often simplistic, offensive, and downright embarrassing.
This is one primary reason that the only “isms” I’ve lately found some utility in are “transhumanism” and “technoprogressivism”, because it has been through the study of the topic-space surrounding these terms that I’ve discovered useful principles like morphological freedom. It’s just amusing (and slightly scary) to have people hear some of my views on morphological freedom and assume that I’m either a pro-life wingnut or a product of some lazy, overly permissive, hippie mentality (and obviously a communist).
Granted, this doesn’t happen too often anymore, but still, one reason I focus more on specific issues than on partisan stuff is because it’s exhausting to have to constantly anticipate (and put forth disclaimers) for every possible little thing that might swing someone’s assumption-o-meter in some extreme direction that has practically nothing to do with what I actually think. If you want to know what I actually think, you’re probably in for a lot of reading, but hopefully you can at least manage to check your assumptions on the way in!
EDIT: Speaking of politics, I’ve been greatly enjoying listening to Prof. Courtney Brown’s course on ‘Science Fiction and Politics lately, which is available at the link in MP3 format (or you can subscribe using iTunes). Though some of the student comments are pretty ridiculous, it’s still a decent listen overall.
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