Okay, I'm going to apologize in advance to those hardy souls who will actually read this. This is the least I felt could be said on this matter without over-oversimplifying. It's all mine, so I'll enjoy any disagreement as long as it's reasoned, and doesn't require me to reiterate what's already here...
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I see a lot of people on here arguing about whether this or that is biased left or right, and can therefore be ignored by reasonable people. It seems many arguments here end up supposedly coming down to this and I think it's a cop-out. I have two things (plus a summary) to say about this -- skip down to "Absolute vs Relative" or "The Middle Wins Again", if you're ADD.
Economic and Social policy are like Apples and Oranges
Margaret Thatcher was to the right of Hitler. Before you stop reading this stupid bullshit, consider only domestic economic policy under each leader. Thatcher's are clearly the further "right" of the two. Of course, this doesn't mean the first sentence is true overall, but it's not 100% false either. It's impossible to not see this as a serious weakness in the one-dimensional left/right model, if your goals tend toward meaningful representation of reality, rather than the means for manipulating huge numbers of largely disenfranchised voters.
Any time you talk as if a single line defines the range of possible political thought, James Carville and Karl Rove hi-five each other and go to bed early, because their jobs could not be any fucking easier. So what's the solution? Another axis, duh! (If this blatant recourse to "Sciencism" disturbs you, I suggest you stop reading right now -- the work of improving quality-of-life is "in-progress" here and it's not yet time to decide whether Zeus or Vishnu gets the credit for it. Laters.)
Some people will have seen http://www.politicalcompass.org/ before. For those that haven't, check it out. It's far from perfect, but it's a damn sight more useful than One Stupid Dimension To Rule Them All. Take the test and post your results, unless you live in a country where truthfully expressing your views is frowned upon, in which case STFU and/or kill yourself. See? I'm sensitive to other traditions!
But why stop at two dimensions? Maybe we need three dimensions to properly chart human political belief. Or four. There are a number of issues arising from the complexity of political thinking, so check this out, if you have the time and energy. It links to other sources, and it's a bit long, but I guarantee you'll come away with a better sense of which concepts people tend to group, and which -- in your opinion -- are better dealt with separately.
Absolute vs Relative
This is where I seem to contradict everything I just wrote. For those that skipped ahead, I just talked about a few types of absolutist methods of representing the entirety of political thought. They are all predicated on defining every political belief a person can hold, from extreme(s) to extreme(s), and everything in between. This is what I mean by absolutist method, and it's a cornerstone of the empirical tradition.
If, OTOH, you do not care to subject your thinking to any kind of scientific rigour, then what remains can only be subjective relativism -- in other words, "left" and "right" solely relative to you and your conception of such. I personally don't have any real problem with this, unless it's being presented as something more concrete, as indicated by the use of words such as "fact" or "objective".
All I'm saying is, when presenting your views as "factual" or "objective", you should be prepared for a shitstorm of requests for "data" and "evidence" from people who believe those words actually mean something. If all you can do in such situations is point to opinions you share, it hurts your case. It might even hurt your credibility to the point where even your more reasonable comments will henceforth go ignored.
Just my opinion, of course.
The Middle Wins Again
Where is the political centre? This one question alone cannot be objectively addressed without identifying all extremes, the distribution of views in between, and -- for those who read the first part -- all of that for each axis, as well as what axes are used/defined at all. In other words, it's hideously complicated. Safe to say, that when 99% of people talk about the political middle, they really mean "me".
Sure, most of us identify with some partisan label or another, but we still tend to see ourselves as among the more reasonable of our ilk. If only more people could be like us, calmly taking the middle path between rabid extremists who would have us tilt dangerously one way or the other. It's all about stability, isn't it? And yet, although our opinions may change over time, we only ever become "more centrist".
This single weakness is probably what makes people so very easy to manipulate on a mass scale. If we're all tilting "middlewards", then whoever defines and most loudly claims the middle has a great deal of "invisible" influence.
Galileo battled the greatest authority of his time to better define the centre of everything, according to free thought and observation. That his theory of heliocentrism turned out to be almost as flawed as geocentrism should teach us something about the importance of context, and its inexorable tendency to expand over time.
The middle of "everything" depends on how you draw its boundaries. Nothing should trip your bullshit detectors faster than an earnest attempt to seize the middle, without first defining the range. (Please note that I stand behind my opinion without feeling the need to do so myself. I may in fact be in the middle, but the odds against it are overwhelming.)
[/rant]
-------------------------------------
I see a lot of people on here arguing about whether this or that is biased left or right, and can therefore be ignored by reasonable people. It seems many arguments here end up supposedly coming down to this and I think it's a cop-out. I have two things (plus a summary) to say about this -- skip down to "Absolute vs Relative" or "The Middle Wins Again", if you're ADD.
Economic and Social policy are like Apples and Oranges
Margaret Thatcher was to the right of Hitler. Before you stop reading this stupid bullshit, consider only domestic economic policy under each leader. Thatcher's are clearly the further "right" of the two. Of course, this doesn't mean the first sentence is true overall, but it's not 100% false either. It's impossible to not see this as a serious weakness in the one-dimensional left/right model, if your goals tend toward meaningful representation of reality, rather than the means for manipulating huge numbers of largely disenfranchised voters.
Any time you talk as if a single line defines the range of possible political thought, James Carville and Karl Rove hi-five each other and go to bed early, because their jobs could not be any fucking easier. So what's the solution? Another axis, duh! (If this blatant recourse to "Sciencism" disturbs you, I suggest you stop reading right now -- the work of improving quality-of-life is "in-progress" here and it's not yet time to decide whether Zeus or Vishnu gets the credit for it. Laters.)
Some people will have seen http://www.politicalcompass.org/ before. For those that haven't, check it out. It's far from perfect, but it's a damn sight more useful than One Stupid Dimension To Rule Them All. Take the test and post your results, unless you live in a country where truthfully expressing your views is frowned upon, in which case STFU and/or kill yourself. See? I'm sensitive to other traditions!
But why stop at two dimensions? Maybe we need three dimensions to properly chart human political belief. Or four. There are a number of issues arising from the complexity of political thinking, so check this out, if you have the time and energy. It links to other sources, and it's a bit long, but I guarantee you'll come away with a better sense of which concepts people tend to group, and which -- in your opinion -- are better dealt with separately.
Absolute vs Relative
This is where I seem to contradict everything I just wrote. For those that skipped ahead, I just talked about a few types of absolutist methods of representing the entirety of political thought. They are all predicated on defining every political belief a person can hold, from extreme(s) to extreme(s), and everything in between. This is what I mean by absolutist method, and it's a cornerstone of the empirical tradition.
If, OTOH, you do not care to subject your thinking to any kind of scientific rigour, then what remains can only be subjective relativism -- in other words, "left" and "right" solely relative to you and your conception of such. I personally don't have any real problem with this, unless it's being presented as something more concrete, as indicated by the use of words such as "fact" or "objective".
All I'm saying is, when presenting your views as "factual" or "objective", you should be prepared for a shitstorm of requests for "data" and "evidence" from people who believe those words actually mean something. If all you can do in such situations is point to opinions you share, it hurts your case. It might even hurt your credibility to the point where even your more reasonable comments will henceforth go ignored.
Just my opinion, of course.
The Middle Wins Again
Where is the political centre? This one question alone cannot be objectively addressed without identifying all extremes, the distribution of views in between, and -- for those who read the first part -- all of that for each axis, as well as what axes are used/defined at all. In other words, it's hideously complicated. Safe to say, that when 99% of people talk about the political middle, they really mean "me".
Sure, most of us identify with some partisan label or another, but we still tend to see ourselves as among the more reasonable of our ilk. If only more people could be like us, calmly taking the middle path between rabid extremists who would have us tilt dangerously one way or the other. It's all about stability, isn't it? And yet, although our opinions may change over time, we only ever become "more centrist".
This single weakness is probably what makes people so very easy to manipulate on a mass scale. If we're all tilting "middlewards", then whoever defines and most loudly claims the middle has a great deal of "invisible" influence.
Galileo battled the greatest authority of his time to better define the centre of everything, according to free thought and observation. That his theory of heliocentrism turned out to be almost as flawed as geocentrism should teach us something about the importance of context, and its inexorable tendency to expand over time.
The middle of "everything" depends on how you draw its boundaries. Nothing should trip your bullshit detectors faster than an earnest attempt to seize the middle, without first defining the range. (Please note that I stand behind my opinion without feeling the need to do so myself. I may in fact be in the middle, but the odds against it are overwhelming.)
[/rant]
Last edited by spastic bullet (2006-06-24 22:49:27)
