Echoes of Distant Idealism on the “Z” Axis
Echoes of Distant Idealism
You’re probably familiar with multi-axis interpretations of an individual’s take on reality. I think my very first exposure to this easily understood plotting of attitudes and impacts came from the old game Dungeons and Dragons. Who here remembers this graph?
The idea is simple. You take two continuums, two spectrums of reality and plot a point on it to represent a particular position. In the above example, you have good versus evil, lawful versus chaotic. You then come up with a hyphenated “alignment” which is supposed to tell you about a person’s view of the world. Just to come up with some examples off the top of my head: Robin Hood was “chaotic good”. Moses was “lawful good”. Mussolini would have been “lawful evil” and Charles Manson would be “chaotic evil”.
My good friend Rachel Maddow recently talked about a multi-axis interpretation of political thought. I’m sure she didn’t come up with this, but her analysis was useful in understanding the political world today. We are all familiar with the conservative-liberal axis. The left-right, Democrat vs. Republican way of looking at the world. Conservatives believe in individual rights over the good of the community. They think change and progress are to be looked at with caution. Liberals think that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one and that society can be engineered to benefit all the members in it through public policy. I’ll admit that is a very simplistic way of looking at this division, but it will suffice for now.
There exists another division in politics: Authoritarian versus libertarian. This is the lesser known of the two spectrums I am talking about here, but it is not a new division. We can easily look at history and show how regimes which were very different on the left-right ideology (say Stalin vs. Hitler) were very similar on the authoritarian versus libertarian scale.
The North American continent gives us three examples of how a society can be organized politically which represent positions on these axes. Canada is liberal but authoritarian. Sure, they have their right-wing part of their democracy, but as compared to others on the conservative-v-liberal scale, the right wing in Canada is moderate anywhere else. Mexico, on the other hand, is very much a conservative society but one which the government (partially due to resource limitations) cannot play a big role in people‘s lives. They had a big revolution 90 years ago to issue in the power of the people, and since then, they’ve been mostly ruled by a Christian, conservative, individualistic hegemony. The USA is somewhere in between those two. We’ve proven ourselves unable to institute something like a Canadian, government run health care system, but at the same time we provide a societal welfare safety net that Mexico could only dream of. Our government will fuck with your personal liberties, but only so far.
On that multi-axis spectrum, here are the major nations of North America:
Let’s take some of the players in modern American politics and put them on this spectrum. Here is a guy who is making news these days for being the most disliked governor in the country. No, not Scott Walker, but he also fits into this quadrant. I’m talking about Florida governor Rick Scott. He’s gotten laws into place imposing the gov’t into a woman’s right to choose and drug testing for all gov’t employees. He sees gov’t intervention into YOUR life as sacrosanct, and as a conservative, he’s got his own values that he thinks need to be imposed on everyone. On the other side of the right-wing authoritairian/libertarian spectrum is Rep Ron Paul. He’s legalize heroin and doesn’t want the gov’t involved in any of our personal decisions.
On the liberal/authoritarian side, we’ll throw my previous congressperson under the bus, from when I lived in North Oakland. Representative Barbara Lee from the people’s Republic of Berkeley. She’s a good socialist. Her ally, but I think one who would disagree with her in regards to gov’t getting involved in social issues comes from the other side of the country, Rep Barney Frank.
Here’s Graph #2:
Oh God, I can feel the eyes rolling up into the backs of the communal heads out there. What is the point of all this analysis? Graphs? Are you kidding us?
I want to point out to those who say that both the left and the right are the same that they aren’t seeing the true reality of our political spectrum. Authoritarian v libertarian has to be considered too. Some say we, as a society, aren’t doing enough. They say we are too free to do whatever we want and that will eventually destroy us. They think gay people shouldn’t be allowed to marry. People should be forced to hear gov’t imposed scripts before a medical procedure. Others say we are doing too much. People should be allowed to opt out of the system. Taxes should be optional, forget about medical insurance. Let me own an assault rifle if I feel like it.
Which side is right? Well, unlike the liberal/conservative spectrum where I am decidedly on the liberal side of things, on the authoritarian/libertarian perspective, I am not really sure. Obviously, some infringement on personal liberties is required to fulfill the liberal agenda, but individual freedoms are what makes America great.
See, there is a third axis that is readily apparent to me personally.
One end of that axis is personified by this comment which I read tonight in the midst of writing this blog:
“right wing blogs left wing blogs >hate wing< blogs religious blogs … what u expect with such stupidity n frivolous waste of brain space? attention walmart shoppers !”
What I am talking about is the “give a shit/make a difference” axis. Some people think that it doesn’t matter what they say, do or believe because it isn’t going to matter in the grand scheme or they just don’t care. It is hard to find people at the far end of this spectrum, unless, due to other attention seeking, narcissistic tendencies, they feel the need to point out to everyone how it doesn’t matter and that they don’t care. Otherwise, as you might imagine, these folks don’t contribute a lot to the discussion.
The other end of this spectrum are the zealots. These are the folks who take every little issue and point out how it exemplifies the state of our society. These are the blowhards, the doomsayers, the extremists and activists. If they have to devote 12 hours a day towards saving the Central Asian Long-eared Pika from the ravages of post-socialist Mongolian agrarian policy, then goddamnit, that’s what they’re going to do!! EVERYTHING Obama does is going to destroy the country! Nothing the conservatives have to offer has any value! Extremism isn’t hard to find; by it’s very nature, it’s all over the internet.
At 14 years old, I was a Reagan Republican. By 18, I was a communist, ready to go to Peru to fight for El Sendero Luminoso. At 30, I was disgusted by politics and my “give a shit” factor was at an all time low. Now, perhaps due to the inherent entertainment value of modern politics, I care again. I’ll be writing songs. I’ll be writing blogs. I’m still a socialist, and I suppose that means I support authoritarian positions, I don’t know. Gy give-a-shit factor, that is definitely on the rise. I’ll never be as passionate about it as some of the folks around here seem to be (but I wonder if most of it isn’t simple self-righteous indignation), but my “Z” axis is sloping upwards
I’ve always been an idealist. I have just been very unsuccessful. I heckled the Klan at Klan rallies, lost a good friend and had the life of me and my family threatened. Rode school buses in N. Carolina and Mississipp for voter registration drives. Went to antiwar demonstrations to get my fair share of abuse.
I guess its all been a waste of time.
where’s vera Wang’s spring collection? 😆 😆 cool blog I loved those axis tests myself.I scored as lawful evil and centrist but leaning 5 mm left but this when talking personal principles ..if it comes to applied politics..3rd apolitical axis anytime.
I’m really glad you brought up this Z axis, Joko. It’s this Z axis that has been giving me fits all this year. The meditative side of me leans toward the “Don’t give a shit” side, and the compassionate side of me swings back to the “Caring to the point of mental anguish” side. I’ve got the other two figured out. It’s this third one that just eats me up.
Btw, my fighters generally got played from a neutral good approach with chaotic tendencies. 😆
Okay, if we’re going to bring up family connections. An uncle on mom’s side, by marriage, used to work for TSR Games back in the 80’s. His last last name was Gygax and perhaps the very reason he had the job was that he was a cousin of THE E. Gary Gygax, creator of D&D! I used to get packages in the mail from Wisconsin full of all kinds of the latest TSR publications. Nowadays, they’re on their 4th Edition of the rules, and EGG might be peripherally thought of us as an ancient founder, but for me he is my “Uncle Gygax”.
“EVERYTHING Obama does is going to destroy the country! Nothing the conservatives have to offer has any value! Extremism isn’t hard to find; by it’s very nature, it’s all over the internet.”
So true.
BTW I pretty much always made my characters Chaotic Neutral.
This was a pretty GRAPHIC blog, Joko!!! lol
I pretty much had a don’t-give-a-shit attitude about politics up until I turned 26. After that for some reason it became important to me. To me our country is or should be about a us mentality, not a me, me, me one. My views now are just about the same as they were a quarter century ago. I might have even leaned a little more left, but not much. I just had to join the crowd with the graph thingy 🙂
My Political ViewsI am a left social libertarianLeft: 5.41, Libertarian: 4.81
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Foreign Policy ViewsScore: -3.18
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Culture War StanceScore: -8.96
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Political ViewsI am a left social libertarianLeft: 6.49, Libertarian: 3.56
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Foreign Policy ViewsScore: -7.87
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Culture War StanceScore: -8.33
Political Spectrum Quiz
Thanks for the quiz.
My Political ViewsI am a centrist moderate social libertarianLeft: 0.44, Libertarian: 2.37
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Foreign Policy ViewsScore: -2.72
Political Spectrum Quiz
My Culture War StanceScore: -2.15
Political Spectrum Quiz
What I found kind of telling was that the quiz is obviously geared towards American politics. In the UK I am actually considered “right wing” by the majority,but applying my same views to an American perspective and,well,results above 😆
I answered honestly this time. I fudged the quiz a few years back so that I came out as a far-right authoritarian,just to paste it in my forum signature to piss a few people off
I done that QUIZ before and I was a teeny-weeny bit to the left on all three.
Some of the political parties where I am > http://postimage.org/image/1tebukoec/
😆