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.
SentientMeat** (-5.12, -7.28) ticks Disagree.
A curious phrase, this - again, one of the propositions in the test which one perhaps ought not “overthink”. Equating acceptance of the status quo with intellectual development is a rather authoritarian premise in my view, and I feel that characterising one who seeks change for the better as fundamentally “immature” is simply a form of ad hominem (to say nothing of the proposition’s sheer defeatism!).
Still, I find it difficult to become impassioned with regards to these rather ambiguous “folksy” sayings. As ever, I would be interested in how others see it, especially those with Strong views one way or the other.
Hadn’t heard that one before. This one is somewhat similar:
I suppose it’s correct to some extend. Rebellion is a necessary phase for young men to live through. Perpetual rebellion and opposition to the establishment as well as thirty year old teenagers is just so tiresome though.
While “making peace with the establishment” may be sign of age, I don’t think it has much to do with maturity, more to do with increased demands on your time, and less expendable energy. Certainly I have gotten less reactionary, and now choose my battles much more carefully. Certainly this is not because I have “made peace” with the status quo of the other causes that I used to be passionate about. I just don’t have the time or energy anymore to attack all of them.
People will answer this depending on how they interpret the terms ‘maturity’ and ‘make peace’ in this context.
Maturity
If maturity is a state of ‘full development’ that a person can arrive at at any age, then making peace with the establishment would be sign of immaturity if the establishment can be improved, since all mature persons should always be striving to improve the lot of themselves and their fellows. And it is always the case that the establishment can be improved and it should always seek continual improvement with input from its constituents. If the establishment does not effectively strive for continual improvement then there is definitely a need to change the system rather than accept it.
If maturity is being a miserable old fart who doesn’t care any more, then accepting the status quo is probably an important part of maturity. Make peace
By accepting the state of affairs at this point in time and not seeking change.
By accepting a system of government that effectively strives for continual improvement and seeks input from all citizens. That is, accepting a process of change. Of course continual improvement means moving the population toward -6, -6.
It would be best to illustrate this with a 2 by 2 matrix, but I can’t.
I interpret this as maturity being a state of full development and making peace as not accepting change, hence I disagree.
Arwin (Economic Left/Right: -2.13 ; Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.56)
Disagree. But only barely - I don’t fully understand that how ‘making peace’ is relevant to maturity. Children do this at various phases in their development. In fact, making peace suggests you were at war with them, something not all that many children actually are and mostly only during a brief phase of adolescence.
In brief, the only reason to make peace with an establishment that sucks, is if you think you have a better chance of changing it that way.
I can only guess that this is a proposition that conservatives would be more inclined to agree with, because it essentially suggests propagating a status quo is a good, mature thing to do.
Young people are on fire for change, especially college students whose first exposure to how things really are was shocking and upsetting. Many kids leaving highschool have a rosy picture of America as the Land of Opprotunity in which all it takes is hard work to become successful, and social issues are always black and white. Suddenly, in college, they’re exposed to myriad viewpoints, and find themselves unable to defend some of their sacred cows. They see that there are no black and white answers, and that there are social stumbling blocks they never thought of before. Some become hostile to the Establishment, believing they’ve been lied to all of their lives.
But as one gets older, there is first a stage of frustration in which you find that change will not happen, at least, not enough to make an appreciable difference. One can either become bitter, or acccepting. It’s my belief that mature people become accepting.
While it’s possible for one person to make a difference, it’s highly unlikely. Politicians, even those whose ideas you espouse, will always lie to you and break their promises. People will abuse the system. No one really cares about your opinion. People will always be exploited, and you are part of the system which exploits them. Mature people have to accept this.
To paraphrase Churchill, people who are not passionate about change in their youths have no heart, but those who cannot accept things the way they really are as they get older have no brains.
Shodan ticks Agree, mildly. Sort on the level of “pick your fights”. Some things are not susceptible to compromise. Some are. Maturity, or at least part of it, is the ability to see which is which.
For pretty much the same reasons as the OP. I just don’t like the sound of this one-- it seems to imply that you should roll over once you’re over 30. And, btw, it says nothing about who “the establishment” is. Would this be true in the former USSR, or in Iran or NK today?
Agree. One could have differences of opinion with the establishment without hostility. One could look for change or improvement in a system that he or she is still at peace with, and I would propose that too is a large aspect of being at peace with the establishment - the ability to respectfully disagree, without flagrantly violating the law, resorting to violence or aggression, or doing other generally immature things.
Of course, one would typically not consider members of the democratic party to be at war with the establishment. They are in fact essential members of said establishment, despite the fact that they do not presently hold as much sway in federal politics as the republican party. The status-quo is not the establishment, and the establishment is usually not a state of unchanging status-quo.
How would you answer this question for someone living in North Korea today or in Germany in 1943? There are many instances when “the establishment” is NOT open to disagreement or discussion-- when active resistance against “the establishment” is the most moral option.
I think the question is once again (drumroll please…) poorly written.
IMHO, “making peace” with the estavblishment doesn’t mean accepting the status quo indfinitely. And it has such a vastly different meaning when comparing, say, the US to China that it becomes meaningless. Here in the US, I’d “Agree”. In China, I couldn’t.
In the US, the establishment allows anyone to try and change things; if you can’t, you’ve a right (but to no good) to act like a pissed-off rebel forever. This is why I can’t stand angry leftists (and, to be fair, certain angry rightists). They couldn’t change ths system, so they assume it must be keeping everyone down. They confuse failure with conspiracy.
In China, as well as a fair portion of world governments, there’s no question about it: the system is keeping you down. It’s not even particularly subtle about it. They just order, and you do. China used to pretend it was more democratic, but it was obvious to everyone then and now. And that, in fact, is one of the reason I can’t stand conspiracy theorists in any stripe. The government, if it was really corrupt and a tiny clique always controlled the system, would not need to pretend otherwise.
But that’s the plain flaw with these questions. They attempt to ask a question. But very, very few ideas can be applied everywhere identically.
And once again, from the FAQ: “Some of the propositions are culturally biased…That’s why the Compass is being promoted in western democracies. We don’t pretend that, for example, the responses of a citizen of a rural region of China can undergo the same evaluation process.”
Well, it’s been a long time since I read that. In that case, it is agreeable. Of course, as I said, western democracies include the right to change themselves; rebelling against “the establishment” is only a childish act. You need to be able to deal with people who are different than you. Refusing to isn’t a sign of being free-spirited. It just means you refuse to grow up and recognize that there are a lot of people who aren’t ever going to agree.
Mostly for the reasons stated in the OP. Giving up on change is a sign of docility, not maturity.
OTOH, “making peace” can be interpreted in many ways. Learning to keep The Man off your back, working within the system to change or undermine it, etc. are more mature ways to deal with frustration at the status quo than rioting and pouting, at least in western democracies.
To me it depends on the establishment. Making peace with an establishment that condones injustices that often stem from a lack of education and understanding, such as racial prejudice, seems immature. Was Martin Luther King immature for standing up against an establishment that permitted racial segregation? No. He was an educated, mature and intelligent man. This was not mere passion.
It is also a form of childish submission, as opposed to demonstrating an intellectual maturity over the sometimes baser establishment. Just because an establishment holds the power does not necessarily make it right and wiser.
I disagree, to an extent. I do feel like there’s a recognition as I get older that “the establishment” is the environment I live in and have to deal with no matter how I like it.
If I were on a deserted island or lost in the woods or climbing a mountain or something, I wouldn’t be railing against all the shit nature throws against me, I would just have to buckle down and deal with it. I feel a similar way about “the establishment”. I don’t like it, and I try to change what I can, and avoid what I can’t change, but some dealings with government and institutional bureaucracy are unavoidable. So I think the recognition of that is a mark of maturity, without going so far as to say one should “make peace” with it.
I scored a -1.13 and 0.1 on this test, a lightly left leaning moderate. :eek:
Not sure if that says more about me or about the test, but I think the latter. IMO voting patterns are the acid test of where you stand on the political scale, and any test that doesn’t calibrate to that is flawed.
One place where I think the test goes wrong is that it doesn’t adequately distinguish between “do you think X is good/bad?” and “do you think the government should do anything about X?” Someone whose answers to these questions tend to vary can have a very different political orientation than would be indicated by the test.
Re the question in the OP, I think you need to weigh the cost/benefit of fighting the system (as you need to do for everything else you do). I think what happens as you get older is that your assessment of these two tends to shift. You start to appreciate the costs of fighting the system, and your assessment of how much you can actually accomplish by doing so tends to go down. Not in everything, of course, but on the whole that’s the direction things generally go.
Oh, I miss these threads! I haven’t taken the test in years.
Let’s see…(-7.25, -7.49), strongly left-libertarian. No shock there, and I’m also not surprised to be more extreme in my views than ten years ago.
I also ticked “disagree” on this one, but SentientMeat had it right in the OP: it’s easy to overthink this one. I suppose I have made peace with the nature of the establishment, how it operates and behaves, but I have not accepted its inevitability nor have I given up fighting for change.
Would you mind expanding on that a little? In the broad spectrum, none of our last three Democratic presidents have been particularly liberal; voting for (two of) them did not accurately reflect my political views. I know antiauthoritarians who supported Bush, and pro-lifers who supported Obama. I’m not sure I quite follow how voting patterns, from a generally small slate of options, is an accurate reflection of one’s political stances.
That’s a fair point, but I’m not sure it invalidates the test.
Or are you concerned you’re not as conservative as you’d like to be?
While I absolutely agree about more accurate assessment of the costs, I have found myself feeling more capable of making changes for knowing the rules of the game. But I think you’re absolutely right that I’m a weirdo exception to the general rule. It may be a little facile, but I think it ties into the idea that the older we get, the more we have to lose for fighting the status quo.
