Political Continuum
From Syiyaia
Contents |
2008.10.20
Political Continuum Study 2008.10.20 A. Conrad Nied
The Political Dimension
There are many political spectrums but they all have their own eccentricities and such. As Brett pointed out to me, a the 3 axis approach with social, economic, and political freedom/restriction doesn't make much sense. What is the difference between social and political freedom? Justifying the differences doesn't reach a valid conclusion.
You realise that the two axes already forms a political spectrum. The politics is implied by the very title and inclusion of the table, what implications does this hold for the two other dimensions though?
What makes social freedom and economic freedom political? Well, they both deal with freedom. But in what context? Allowing people to marry allows them to be free, but you are binding them to a choice within marriage or not. To be married they still have only limited rights. The freedom to marry whatever consenting adult you want to is great, but many other options are still out of reach. You are relatively freer, but still, on an absolute scale, constrained by the state. Take other examples, are social programs and education social freedom? But they restrict yourself as well as empower you. Social institutions limit social freedom, but they are supposed to enforce it? Maybe freedom isn't the right concept.
It all goes back to the original term, political.
What is this vague concept of "social concerns" impacted to politics? Freedom was a good starting point, but since it is political let's not look at social concerns from the freedom/restrictive standard, but the decision-making standard. Ultimately politics is about decision making and power management. Who makes and/or influences the decisions holds the power.
Now our political continuum is based on the level of decision making and power management. What are the scales of that? The maximum and minimum would be the largest management body and the smallest management body. Leaving aside existential concerns of a deterministic universe or illusion of choice, we get a continuum of:
<-----|----------|--------|---------|----------|-->
Individual Community State Federal Gov. World
This is the actual political continuum.
Another way of writing this is Individual v. Corporate Decision Making and Power Management
<-----|---------------------------------------|--->
Individual Corporate
The Other Dimensions
There is the two axes approach that we mentioned earlier, with Social and Economic axes, but we can't just include them in our spectrum in the same way. Instead of the confusing Restrictive-Liberal method, we will impact Social Issues and Economic Issues to Political Decision Making and Power Management.
Social Issues are concerned with what the individual is able to do and how they interact with one another. If you always decide what you do then you are very individualistic. Realistically, you can not be that individualistic, you do rely on other people. I don't even imply peer pressure. People gravitate towards large bodies of people because it makes them feel more comfortable and such. Therefore, corporate social decision making is not only the State telling you what to do, but also mass media, religious bodies(churches), and any corporate entity that restricts behaviour. I do not mean to say that religion is Socially Corporate, but churchs are usually. If you believe your faith on a personal level (their exists no church that can change your decisions as to your faith), then you can be completely socially individualistic, but if you allow any church to influence you then you are giving in to social corporateness. Furthermore, as I said before, social institutions are by nature socially corporate. Censuses and polls limit people to particular options. Even if you give people a variety of options to do, you only give them those options. As much as I used to believe and some people still believe that people are all similar and can fit into nice boxes, they never wholely can. The degree of corporateness, therefore, is based on how many people the decision making bodies influence and how deeply they influence decisions. So no one type of institution will fall under a particular part of the social continuum, it is dependent on the time and those factors
Campaigns and pushing ideas is also a form of corporate social decision making and power management. Whether Obama is campaigning or you are encouraging people to vote for measure 60, campaigning tries to make people conform to a decision (again, even the choice of yes or no is a limiting choice). Since they seek to determine someone's behavour. If you allow the influences around you to affect the way you vote, you are behaving influenced by corporate entities. Even voting means that you are extending your decision making over a corporate body, thereby you are still appealing to corporateness.
Social Decision Making and Power Management <-----|---------------------------------------|--->
Individual Corporate
Institutions Churchs Social Programs Mass Media The State Voting
Corporate Manifestation
Within this, another continuum is spawned. How do people manifest social corporateness? Church? Media? State?
Corporate Manifestation is an interesting idea to look at, some people prefer Social Programs over Churchs changing their decisions, but they will are submitting themselves to such.
So what makes x ideology different than y? If they both manifest corporately? They manage power equally, they just manifest that management differently.
The End
Let's include existentialism and similiar ideas. Let's look at the deterministic point of view, there are no choices, everything is bound to one another in a giant chain of causation. In that model, we define an actual terminal point for our continuum
<----|-----------|----------------|
Individual Corporate Universal Determinism
Universal Determinism lies on the point infinity of the spectrum, but what is the absolute opposite? Individualism and
