01-10-2019, 12:18 PM
(01-10-2019, 11:00 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Christian Democrats would be close to the center, so accommodating them would requite a bulls-eye zone that would have to accommodate Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews who have their own democratic tendencies. Generally eschewing militancy except in war (they may hate war, but that does not precluding them from waging it well, as did FDR) and especially terrorism on behalf of or in opposition to the State, so if you want an orange zone for them, then that is your choice.
So I'll probably opt for a centrist zone. And I'll colour it WHITE, since in white the wisdom of all colours is united, according to Gandalf the Grey.
Quote:Scientific progressives? They are obviously not traditionalists, as science has frequently refuted tradition. Nationalists? It depends upon the person. Free enterprise libertarians? Not likely. Socialists? not especially, unless they labor under a 'Socialist' regime. I would clearly put Darwin, Einstein, and Freud into the counter-culture zone. But Planck? Hawking? Euler? Gauss? Leibniz? Copernicus? Euclid? Archimedes? Fermi? Sakharov? Chandrasekhar? Galileo? Mendel? Faraday? Lavoisier? Curie? Bohr?
One might as well discuss creative people.The traditionalist Fyodor Dostoevsky is almost a polar opposite to the ultra-Left Bertolt Brecht. I doubt that Richard Wagner and Frederic Chopin would have gotten along. Picasso is socialist to an extent and counter-cultural on the other.
I was thinking about people like Dawkins and the Rational Wiki staff, since they are the embodiment of SCIENTISM, rather than being SCIENTISTS by profession. Are they countercultural? Maybe on things like homosexuality and weed, but they are no fans of alternative medicine or back-to-nature lifestyles. Socialists? Possibly, but not of the class struggle variety. It may be they are on the red-purple-white cusp.
Wagner was certainly a nationalist, possibly a fascist. As for other scientists and artists, IDK anything. Fermi claimed that humanity is the only civilisation in the galaxy, based on the fact that aliens haven't colonised the Solar System. Such an idea could result from viewing imperial expansion as natural for any intelligent species. Is this a result of nationalistic views? Maybe, but I feel my conclusion is too far-reaching.
The thinker who shaped my thinking most, Olaf Stapledon. Militant anti-nationalist, strong supporter of democracy, probably a socialist though opposed to class struggle. Staunch pacifist in the 1920s, then became a supporter of military intervention against Hitler. I imagine he would probably approve of toppling Saddam, had he been alive in 2003 (he would be 120 or so). I'm inclined to classify him as a centrist (like Roosevelt). He sounded very radical when he dreamt of a world without nations and money, but never endorsed any hardline political movement. IIRC he said something good about the Fabians.