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The past few years, I've found this political compass article as a pretty good way in understanding ones ideology. Mostly putting the up for the poll but feel free to give thoughts on the dimensions and/or why you think you fit under each.
Coupled / Decoupled
Thrive / Survive
Radical/ Incremental
This is a third dimension I wanted to add as it's been something I've noticed that can separate people in the same party. It focuses on how quick/ slowly change for a policy should come about. A radical would normally side that change should come quick with a lot of moving parts at once. An incrementalist would want more gradual/ slower change. One could argue this might overlap either of the dimensions above but I think it's independent enough to be it's own thing.
This might be a hard poll to decide on. I found when seeing this article (credits to @Jack V Savage btw for showing it way back) it took time seeing different discussions play out and view them over these dimensions. I've found you usually can see more common ground with someone by looking at this rather than just the issue at hand.
Coupled / Decoupled
In decoupled society the default relationship between two people is that of no obligations whatsoever (special circumstances like friendship or family bonds don’t count since we’re talking about the macro scale). The only obligations are to respect explicitly stated rights and agreements. No expectations beyond that are valid (for example, between employers and employees). Social problems can and should be addressed with formal means: contracts, property rights, tort law. Political decouplers like money and the market as institutions because they quantify and decontextualize social obligations.
In coupled society what it means to be a good person or what may be required of you at any point is open-ended. There are not clear boundaries between people and you are expected to take others’ or society’s interests into account as much as your own. Anything you do that plausibly affects anyone or anything outside yourself is everybody’s business; duties are not fully specified and can never be completely discharged or fulfilled. Social problems can and should be addressed by everyone taking on themselves to be more self-sacrificing and focus less on what rights they have to do what they want. Political couplers dislike money and the market for the same reasons decouplers like it[3].
Coupling and decoupling[4] as moral stances are obviously politically relevant. How about as factual stances? At least as much. According to a decoupled view, human beings are built from the inside out. They have traits, tastes and behaviors that results from a combination of inborn nature, rational thought and acts of will, and social structures are the emergent result of them interacting. In the coupled view, human beings are created from the outside in. They’re lumps of clay shaped to perform the roles assigned to them by a system tending to perpetuate itself, and individual selves are the emergent result of socialization into these roles[5].
Stanovich talks about “cognitive decoupling”, the ability to block out context and experiential knowledge and just follow formal rules, as a main component of both performance on intelligence tests and performance on the cognitive bias tests that correlate with intelligence. Cognitive decoupling is the opposite of holistic thinking. It’s the ability to separate, to view things in the abstract, to play devil’s advocate.
Thrive / Survive
In a “survive” scenario (think famine, war or zombie apocalypse) mistakes are costly, outsiders are potential threats, keeping order is paramount and we can’t afford to be too generous towards the weak lest they pull us down with them. Only serious dangers are real problems and risk and discomfort are things we need to deal with.
In a “thrive” scenario by contrast (think true post-scarcity in a future automated economy), where we don’t even need to think about making a collective living we can afford almost limitless generosity towards the “other”, the non-useful, the few antisocial, the sensitive and the non-conformist. As we get richer we work towards eliminating ever smaller risks and discomforts.
Radical/ Incremental
This is a third dimension I wanted to add as it's been something I've noticed that can separate people in the same party. It focuses on how quick/ slowly change for a policy should come about. A radical would normally side that change should come quick with a lot of moving parts at once. An incrementalist would want more gradual/ slower change. One could argue this might overlap either of the dimensions above but I think it's independent enough to be it's own thing.
This might be a hard poll to decide on. I found when seeing this article (credits to @Jack V Savage btw for showing it way back) it took time seeing different discussions play out and view them over these dimensions. I've found you usually can see more common ground with someone by looking at this rather than just the issue at hand.
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