13 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
13 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
## One of the reasons why I don't think this is a useful categorical tool is because it leads to a lot of confusion about what any given ideology actually believes. For example, Ba'athism is seen as holding both right and left-wing beliefs simultaneously, which causes it to end up in a weird place due to the law of averages. I mean, for goodness' sake, Kleptocracy ends up on here twice due to the ineptitude of this model; nobody knows where to place it. Fascism and Nazism suffer a similar fate, in that Economic Fascism is when the government sees Capitalism as a useful mule to hitch a cart to, with which it can enact all of its grand and big ideas, whatever those may be. But many people seem to want to garble this axis in particular, sometimes ignoring that it's supposed to be about economic policy, instead injecting nationalism into it. Nationalism, in its simplest form being the belief that each nation should govern itself, free from outside interference, does not exist on either of these axes. Whether the government's scope applies only to their own country, or if it can or should go beyond its borders or when, or whether borders should even exist, requires a separate axis entirely. The problem here is that the history of human thought is far too complicated to display all of the axiomatic persuasions of any particular ideology on only two axes, and while adding an additional axis would complicate the model enough, if we were to add another one, the average human mind would find it very difficult to comprehend. The best we could do is something like this, but it doesn't create the same categorical effect, even if it plainly displays more ideological axioms, we still don't know exactly how to categorize this person, and if we were to color code and then blend the colors, we'd have to calculate that. It's just too damn complicated. So, if we want to set out to achieve a two-axis categorical model, we must ensure that both axes are completely simple, which they are not.
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## The vertical axis of more government versus less government is a simple, value-centric axiomatic dichotomy. In other words, it speaks to basic values and is therefore useful. In contrast, the horizontal axis of Socialism versus Capitalism, or left-wing versus right wing economic policies, is trying to grapple with a much deeper question about who gets to own things of value.
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## Thus, my proposal is simple: we agree to define the horizontal axis as positive rights versus negative rights.
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## It's not to say that this model isn't without its flaws. There is no axes for isolationism, for example, so if you're strong on borders that doesn't compute here, though it may fall on someone who believes other things based on their pathologies. And obviously, there is no axis for racism, or who the racism applies to, or what the result of the racism may be. The most useful antidote to this, is you take the most fundamental beliefs on this axis, and scale them up to larger populations. Now, this may cause complications, because people at different levels struggle to fit their axiomatic beliefs into larger problems, but I'll take a crack at some examples. One of the benefits of such a values-based model is that it applies to all situations, big or small, so it may force you to rethink the way you treat people on an interpersonal level, effectively merging your axiomatic beliefs into one belief system, which I think we're in dire need of, given the lack of consistency we see in all political persuasions.
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## If you believe in negative rights, and you apply that value at the familial level, you will raise your children with an expectation for them to behave well, in accordance with preserving their own negative rights, taking on the responsibilities that come with them, and respecting the negative rights of others. So the bubble of negative rights that surround each individual in your family, has such an overlap that it becomes its own bubble in a collective sense, and anyone within that bubble shares the largest set of common values than at any level in society in order for them to coexist. If enough values prove to be uncommon between one member of the family and the others, that member may be distanced from the family, potentially permanently. To use a human universal as an example, if the father begins to abuse a child, so long as the mother does not think it just, she now has to confront that their common values are no longer common, and will use any means available to her to create distance between her and the offending party. In the modern day, divorce can be such a means, but in the state of nature, she may have to use whatever form of physical force she can employ, or perhaps she must use trickery or other tactics in order to move the bubble of the family's rights to exclude his.
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## To scale it up one level, if you coexist in physical proximity with other families, those families must share a certain amount of values as well, though the amount of values decreases.
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## To place anyone on this model is a claim, and all claims require evidence and thus a case to be made. So while all these claims require evidence, I can spitball a couple to give a rundown of how categorization should work here. Keep in mind that people can change views over time, so it serves us well to consider how the views and policies of individuals may have shifted. |