Many political debates here have included references to The Political Compass, which uses a set of 61 questions to assess one’s political orientation in terms of economic left/right and social libertarianism/authoritarianism (rather like the “Libertarian diamond” popular in the US).
And so, every so often I will begin a thread in which the premise for debate is one of the 61 questions. I will give which answer I chose and provide my justification and reasoning. Others are, of course, invited to do the same including those who wish to “question the question”, as it were.
It would also be useful when posting in these threads to give your own “compass reading” in your first post, by convention giving the Economic value first. My own is
SentientMeat: Economic: -5.12, Social: -7.28, and so by the above convention my co-ordinates are (-5.12, -7.28). Please also indicate which option you ticked. I might suggest what I think is the “weighting” given to the various answers in terms of calculating the final orientation, but seeing for yourself what kind of answers are given by those with a certain score might be more useful than second-guessing the test’s scoring system.
Now, I appreciate that there is often dissent regarding whether the assessment the test provides is valid, notably by US conservative posters, either because it is “left-biased” (??) or because some propositions are clearly slanted, ambiguous or self-contradictory. The site itself provides answers to these and other Frequently Asked Questions, and there is also a separate thread: Does The Political Compass give an accurate reading? [size=2]Read these first and then, if you have an objection to the test in general, please post it there. If your objection is solely to the proposition in hand, post here. If your objection is to other propositions, please wait until I open a thread on them. (And for heaven’s sake, please don’t quote this entire Opening Post when replying like this sufferer of bandwidth diarrhea.)
The above will be pasted in every new thread in order to introduce it properly, and I’ll try to let each one exhaust itself of useful input before starting the next. Without wanting to “hog the idea”, I would be grateful if others could refrain from starting similar threads. Finally, I advise you to read the full proposition below, not just the thread title (which is necessarily abbreviated), and request that you debate my entire OP rather than simply respond, “IMHO”-like, to the proposition itself.
To date, the threads are:
Does The Political Compass give an accurate reading?
Political Compass #1: Globalisation, Humanity and OmniCorp.
#2: My country, right or wrong
#3: Pride in one’s country is foolish.
#4: Superior racial qualities.
#5: My enemy’s enemy is my friend.
#6: Justifying illegal military action.
#7: “Info-tainment” is a worrying trend.
#8: Class division vs. international division. (+ SentientMeat’s economic worldview)
#9: Inflation vs. unemployment.
#10: Corporate respect of the environment.
#11: From each according to his ability, to each according to need.
#12: Sad reflections in branded drinking water.
#13: Land should not be bought and sold.
#14: Many personal fortunes contribute nothing to society.
#15: Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.
#16: Shareholder profit is a company’s only responsibility.
#17: The rich are too highly taxed.
#18: Better healthcare for those who can pay for it.
#19: Penalising businesses which mislead the public.
#20: The freer the market, the freer the people.
#21: Abortion should be illegal.
#22: All authority must be questioned.
#23: An eye for an eye.
#24: Taxpayers should not prop up theatres or museums.
#25: Schools shouldn’t make attendance compulsory.
#26: Different kinds of people should keep to their own.
#27: Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.
#28: It’s natural for children to keep secrets.
#29: Marijuana should be legalised.
#30: School’s prime function is equipping kids to find jobs.
#31: Seriously disabled people should not reproduce.
#32: Learning discipline is the most important thing.
#33: ‘Savage peoples’ vs. ‘different culture’
#34: Society should not support those who refuse to work.
#35: Keep cheerfully busy when troubled.
#36: First generation immigrants can never be fully integrated.
#37: What’s good for corporations is always good for everyone.
#38: No broadcasting institution should receive public funding.
#39: Our civil rights are being excessively curbed re. terrorism.
#40: One party states avoid delays to progress.
#41: Only wrongdoers need worry about official surveillance.
#42: The death penalty should be an option for serious crimes.
#43: Society must have people above to be obeyed.
#44: Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything isn’t art at all.
#45: Punishment is more important than rehabilitation.
#46: It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.
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**Proposition #47: The businessman and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.
SentientMeat** (-5.12, -7.28) ticks Disagree.
This was a tough one. The businessman and the manufacturer make progress possible, thus keeping us and our loved ones alive, in contact, and in comfort far beyond the wildest dreams even of history’s richest and most powerful. And yet, what do we keep from history to fulfil those longer, more comfortable lives? Not those manufactured and traded items - a Roman chisel or a medieval printing press. We keep the works of its writers and artists. All I have left in my house from 2800, 1100 and 400 years ago are The Illiad, Beowulf, and the complete Shakespeare respectively. The “work” of the businessman and the manufacturer only lasts until the next progressive increment, whereas that of the writer and the artist stands forever, as my bookcase and CD collection testifies. How are we to say which is more important?
I cannot deny that I feel wonderfully blessed to live at a time when I can live in such health and comfort, but neither can I deny what it is I do with this blessing. We are not mindless automatons striving like termites solely to build a higher mound and maximise the number of humans extant: We seek quality in our lives, as well as quantity. Art in all its forms, from music to cinema, games and literature, fills the “extra” life that business and manufacture have granted us, and which the slave of yore who toiled all day and died so young never had.
In comparing such apples and oranges, it is tempting to resort to outright strawmanship by pitting a mediocre example from one field against a paragon from the other. (“You’re not telling me that the talentless dilettantes at my local art college are as important as Bill Gates?”, or “What, the greedy swindler cranking out substandard goods is more important than Mark Twain?”) Nor should we fall for fallacious what ifs regarding redundancy: I consider that, in the same way that someone would sooner or later exploit the opportunities which make the businessman and manufacturer rich, thus making the personalities themselves obsolete, so would a powerful story warning of a totalitarian dystopia surely be written eventually even if Eric Blair had died in the Spanish civil war long before he conceived 1984.
All of these people, the businessman, the manufacturer, the writer, the artist, are important (indeed, they could even conceivably be the very same person). The business acumen and ability to identify and exploit opportunities of the first do not mutually exclude the creativity and abstraction of the second, nor vice versa, and there is a strong visionary streak to all of them. One might argue that there couldn’t be writers and artists without businessmen and manufacturers , but I think the converse is just as true: it is that very creativity which allows us to innovate, and business and manufacture merely subsequently proceed “mechanically”, based on that innovation, according to the law of diminishing returns.
In summary, with the rhetorical gun to my head forcing me to pick one of the two as more important, perhaps the businessman/manufacturer just shades it. However, I feel far more comfortable ascribing equal importance to the artist/writer, and so I choose to (marginally) Disagree with #47.
