02-02-2019, 11:16 AM
(This post was last modified: 02-02-2019, 11:26 AM by Bill the Piper.)
(02-02-2019, 09:54 AM)David Horn Wrote:(02-01-2019, 06:59 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: On the existing two-axis and two-quadrant Nolan grid, that would be the vertical axis for anarchy (or libertarian) at the top vs. totalitarian, (or statist) at the bottom, upper right vs. lower left for economics, and upper left vs. lower right for individual rights vs. social conservatism (group power/hive mentality); normally called the cultural or social axis. I think those are adequate. Religious conservatism in politics is just another hive mentality or group power type. Examples of these conservative groups are nations, races, and religions. In many cases they are all fused, as in fascist Italy. Hitler was an extreme example of all three group types as part of their ideology, and the religious aspect was uppermost, consisting of the final solution to the Jewish "problem." Donald Trump is another example of this fusion, although not always explicitly stated; but Trump can lie and obfuscate by changing his statements at a moment's notice.
On the European political compass, the axes are exactly the same, but they are placed at different locations around the wheel. In that chart, the cultural/social axis or individualism/civil rights vs. group power is the vertical axis. Economics is the left vs. right axis, and the anarchy vs. totalitarian axis falls at lower right vs. upper left. No revision is needed to these wheels in my opinion.
I highlighted the religion comment as an example of why two axes don't get the job done. Religion is neither conservative nor liberal, communal nor individual. Your beliefs in astrology fall fully within the religious sphere, and you are anything but conservative. I would put you more in the communal than individual class too, but others can feel otherwise. After all, there are monks who go off to live isolated and pure lives, and they are certainly driven by their religious beliefs. On that axis, strength of belief or non-belief is the measure, not affiliation with other beliefs. Other axes can also be assigned, but only if they are uncorrelated with the axes already defined. I've never had much luck with more than 4.
I started with the classical 4 Nolanist sectors:
- leftist individualists (counterculture)
- right-wing individualists (libertarians)
- leftist collectivists (communists)
- right-wing collectivist (nationalists)
But I felt something is missing. I added one for regimes devoted to religious transcendence, and got my 5-sector diagram. Seems to work.
Some people want to have an autocracy-democracy axis. I had another idea. The distance from the centre of the circle measures the readiness to use violence or "extremism". Tyrants and violent anarchist revolutionaries are both on the periphery. Autocratic power is just a tool. Violent revolutionaries dislike it, when it's used by their opponents (the Bolshies hated the tzar), but they have to qualms about seizing autocratic power when it becomes available.