Political compass for the21st century

[Eric the Green]

(05-19-2020, 04:39 AM)Blazkovitz Wrote:
I like the basic idea of spiral dynamics, but there is no guarantee the new era will be higher or more evolved than the previous one. After the Fall of Rome, Western Civilization retreated and progress resumed only in 12th century or so. The Renaissance looked back at Roman achievements, and rejected the Middle Ages. So can a future era look down at our saeculum.

Spiral dynamics and my system don't need to contradict each other, we can have more evolved variants of each sector. Xi Jinping's securitarianism is definitely more evolved than Louis XIV's securitarianism. Warrior consciousness of an Industrial Age neo-reactionary like the blogger Sargon of Accad is more evolved than the ancient Sargon's one.

I agree that not all sectors appeared at the same time, there was no pro-market ideology before the Enlightenment and no inclusivism before WW2. I also agree that some eras one sector becomes more prominent than the others. In the Middle Ages, this was the theocracy sector. In the Age of Discovery (16th-18th century) it was the securitarian sector and dynastic power. Today mainstream politics is mostly about market and inclusivity sectors, at least in English-speaking nations.

So, maybe we can add the third dimension to make the 6-sector circle a tube, moving along the third dimension representing moving towards a more evolved form of a particular style of sociopolitical consciousness?

Again, thanks for the discussion. Always illuminating.

I would again put out the Theodore Parker/Martin Luther King Jr. saying: "the arc of history is long, but it bends toward justice."

It is certainly true that history goes through periods of decay and destruction. That's what Pluto and Shiva are all about. Sometimes something must be killed or destroyed so that new life can come. That's what happened when Rome fell. That happened because the empire was no longer viable. It was exhausted and had decayed into a tyranny. The foundations of feudalism and the middle ages were laid in the late 3rd and 4th century. Not only was Christianity taking over, along with many other cults, but the Romans just didn't have the curiosity and inventive skill to keep their people safe and prosperous with new technology. And the barbarians could not be kept at bay indefinitely.

So they swarmed in and created a new civilization, and the foundations of the 12th century were already being laid during the Dark Ages. The revival of knowledge came through from Islamic Spain. Islam and Byzantium were powerful and influential civilizations in their own right. The Northumbrian renaissance helped spark the new civilization in the early 9th century. Charlesmagne sponsored a mini-renaissance, and after the Viking raids ended the Dark Ages, the Abbey of Cluny was founded in circa 910, and from there grew the style of the cathedrals and the power of the Church. History is cyclical and spiral, so periods of death are followed by new birth, and progress continues through the process. The Medieval society turned out to be much more inventive and even scientific than the Roman. The Renaissance then emerged out of another death and rebirth process. They rejected the dying medieval society of the 14th century, and maybe their plague is being repeated for us, I don't know. I am more optimistic, and I think there's a new age renaissance today that is under the wraps of conventional paradigms. But today, cultural historians do not reject the Middle Ages the way Renaissance humanists did. It was the major source of our society today.

The process is laid out here: http://philosopherswheel.com/fortunes.htm

"Spiral dynamics and my system don't need to contradict each other." I seem to agree, and that seemed implied in my post. Yes, the "tube" idea brings in the spiral dynamic to the circle.

But I don't care much about bloggers and video games. Maybe because I'm a boomer and not a millennial/Gen Z youth.

One thing you should notice. What makes your political compass different is your separation of the Theological into one quadrant. The usual political compass lumps this together with social conservatism in general including nationalism and racism, and Spiral Dynamics lumps Brown into Blue and early Orange and ignores not only socialism (Neptune) but also the distorted version of socialism (nationalism, national socialism/racism) which you include as a separate quadrant. Only Planetary Dynamics that I have invented includes Theological as a separate meme called Jupiter, coinciding with Spiral Dynamics Blue in its medieval phase. In astrology, Jupiter has always stood for the church, the priesthood, the pope, and moral guidance-- the 1st estate.

The 4 giant planets represent the 4 quarters and estates of traditional society. Jupiter the priesthood, Saturn the nobility, Uranus the merchants, and Neptune the peasants. Pluto, of course, is the outcast class, the untouchables, and also the saints and spiritual seekers; today's hippies, and "minorities" and outcast groups demanding inclusion. The Fifth Estate! And these are the 5 elements too: fire, earth, air, water and ether/spirit. AND: prophets, civics, nomads, and artists, in the same order. And some say, a fifth generational archetype exists.

In this age of social distancing, we are all Pluto. We are all untouchable! PLuto has returned!

Symbolic speculation is fun!