Monday, December 23, 2013
Vector politics
Semi-random thought triggered by yesterday's semi-random thoughts on Non-Partisan. I was trying to imagine a left-right axis something like this:
What goes on the right side of center? What's the opposite of Pol Pot? Dunno.
Made me realize that our static definitions of political positions are absurd and useless. Placing the fulcrum in the middle forced me to think in vector form.
Leaders who pull a society toward mass death and destruction in the name of some abstract ideology are on the left end. Leaders who pull a society toward security for normal citizens by restoring or improving normal social connections are on the right end of the scale.
Vector form factors out the verbal content of the ideology. If you're trying to implement an ideology, you're pulling leftward. If you're trying to remove an ideology, you're pulling rightward.
This definition leaves Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Lincoln at the far left of the scale, and it fills in the right side of the vector diagram in a satisfying way. Some names that come to mind would be FDR, Pinochet, Putin and Clinton. All were experimentalists, willing to do what's needed to eradicate a theory that had crippled a country. They faced different sizes of theory and performed with varying degrees of success, but all belong on the same side.
¶ 2:00 AM 
What goes on the right side of center? What's the opposite of Pol Pot? Dunno.
Made me realize that our static definitions of political positions are absurd and useless. Placing the fulcrum in the middle forced me to think in vector form.
Leaders who pull a society toward mass death and destruction in the name of some abstract ideology are on the left end. Leaders who pull a society toward security for normal citizens by restoring or improving normal social connections are on the right end of the scale.
Vector form factors out the verbal content of the ideology. If you're trying to implement an ideology, you're pulling leftward. If you're trying to remove an ideology, you're pulling rightward.
This definition leaves Pol Pot, Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Lincoln at the far left of the scale, and it fills in the right side of the vector diagram in a satisfying way. Some names that come to mind would be FDR, Pinochet, Putin and Clinton. All were experimentalists, willing to do what's needed to eradicate a theory that had crippled a country. They faced different sizes of theory and performed with varying degrees of success, but all belong on the same side.
¶ 2:00 AM
