The Political GPS: New Ideological Dimensions
Chances are, you’ve heard of the "political compass". The political compass--first rolled out in the year 2000--is a 62 question quiz designed to evaluate political ideology. The quiz is built along two main axes: economic (left-right) and social (libertarian-totalitarian), and its results are displayed on the familiar "Cartesian coordinate graph".
The first time I took a crack at the ol' "compass" I was thrilled to see such a comprehensive and stimulating political metric (yes... I’m a massive political nerd). But, at the end of it all, I couldn’t help but feel that something was missing. This feeling of mine became even tougher to ignore as the years after the 2016 election passed by. With all of the changes in the political world, it became apparent to me that there is a lot more to modern political ideology than the two axes of the "political compass".
Of course, I’m not the only one who’s thought this way, and there actually is something called the "political sextant" out there (I was actually going to use that name until I found it already existed!). Despite the highly sophisticated and exciting political sextant, I think there is still more to be investigated. In terms of catchy names, I ended up choosing the "political GPS" for its modern and highly specified connotations.
Recently, I had some time to sit down and think about what a more descriptive political quiz could look like, and I gathered a list of concepts that I think stand as the most important issues in modern political ideology. Here’s a mini sampling of them below:
(1) Collectivism vs. Individualism
Although the political compass skirts around this issue with its "libertarian & totalitarian" dichotomy, it fails to acknowledge that it is a mere component of one’s overall views. What do I mean by this? Well, take for example the seeming oxymoron of the "collectivist anarchist" and the "free market socialist". Neither one of these monikers is actually a contradiction, but we get the (correct) impression that the individualism/collectivism divide is much hazier than many like to assume.
(2) Pro- Social Constructivism vs. Anti-
In the past decade, Americans have grown accustomed to various debates across this dimension, the most prominent being the so-called gender versus sex ideological bloodbath. Although there is a pretty good correlation between party allegiance and opinion on social constructivism, the relationship is far from cut-and-dried.
(3) Elitism vs. Populism
This is an ideological component which is pretty subtle and tough to differentiate from the "collectivism vs. individualism" one. To grasp this piece of ideology, let’s draw attention to the difference between a technocracy (rule by intellectual/scientific elites) and a municipal government (rule by local citizens). The former is a prime example of elitism, while the latter is--taken in isolation--an example of a type of populism in action. An important thing to note here is that somebody can be a "collectivist elitist" just as well as one can be an "individualist populist". The "elitism vs. populism" & "collectivism vs. individualism" distinction is super important.
I came up with a bunch more ideological pieces that could be explained ad nauseum, but let’s divert for now and take a look at how such a supplement to the political compass could actually look.
Overall, I came up with 11 ideological dimensions along which to chart: (Collectivism vs. Individualism), (Religious vs. Anti-Religious), (Pro- Mega Corp. vs. Anti-), (Pro- Identity Politics vs. Anti-), (Pro- Social Constructivism vs. Anti-), (Globalism vs. Nationalism), (Science as Wholly Objective vs. Science as Potentially Biased), (Pro- Mass/Big Tech. Surveillance vs. Anti-), (Interventionism vs. Anti-), (Elitism vs Populism) and (Pro-Choice vs. Pro-Life).
In this supplement to the compass, what we’ll call the "political GPS", there are two poles--the "MAGA Territory" and the "WOKE Territory"
A person deep into MAGA Territory would be highly tilted towards the following:
(Individualism), (Religious), (Pro- Mega Corp.), (Anti- Identity Politics), (Anti- Social Constructivism), (Nationalism), (Science as Potentially Biased), (Anti- Mass/Big Tech. Surveillance), (Anti- Interventionism), (Populism) and (Pro-Life).
And a person deep into WOKE Territory would be score high in essentially every opposite dimension.
Of course, all of this may seem a bit much, a tad complicated or superfluous. Accordingly, we can simultaneously spice things up and simplify everything through the use of color-coding. Each of the 11 ideological "dimensions" can be given a unique color. We could then have a full display like this:
Then to simplify things even further, in fact, to "brand" things a bit, we could provide basic flag designs to each quiz-taker, presenting a banner comprising the top three (or more) highest ranked ideological dimensions. For example, let’s say someone’s ideological profile had three "maxed out" ideological dimensions--Populism, Religious and Anti- Social Constructivism. A flag for such an ideology could look something like this:
Or we could even provide the quiz-taker with a sort of "totem pole" -styled flag, ranking all of their respective ideological dimensions.
But that’s not all!
As we mentioned, the political GPS is to be viewed as a supplement to the classical political compass, and we can combine the results of the two metrics into one. An example of this would be something like so:
One of the coolest things about all of this is that there are no strict requirements as to where everything will land! In this crazy world we inhabit there are pro-life anarchists and there are religious communists; it's a jungle out there for sure.
And it is on this note that I should probably fess up and admit that the above example (of the flag on the compass) is representative of my own ideology. Yes, I know... I'm a bizarre ideological breed indeed!
I'll have more to come on this, and if anybody cares enough to actually get started on programming a real quiz for the political GPS, be my guest!
