cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/17821633
Take our quiz to find out which one of our nine political typology groups is your best match, compared with a nationally representative survey of more than 10,000 U.S. adults by Pew Research Center. You may find some of these questions are difficult to answer. That’s OK. In those cases, pick the answer that comes closest to your view, even if it isn’t exactly right.
That’s not a bad idea to take it separately for both my frames of mind.
I hear you on being a “radical moderate”. Maybe 7-10 years ago I had a period where I thought of myself as a centrist because, despite being generally quite left-leaning, in certain areas I sit more toward the middle. I’ve since refrained from referring to myself in that way as the Overton window has shifted do far right that I no longer feel it’s correct. Furthermore, I see centrism these days (and in retrospect, back then too) as the domain of fence-sitters.
Philosophically I’ve “identified” as an anarchist since my teens and many years later that still forms the core of my beliefs. However, I’m also rather pessimistic about people as a whole and believe humanity hasn’t reached a point where that’s feasible outside of small dedicated groups of like-minded people (like communes or worker’s co-ops). In my opinion, the average individual is either too self-interested or naive at this stage of our social development. Thus, if anarchism were suddenly attempted on a national scale it would inevitably devolve into strongmen rising up and returning us to something like feudalism. (The same direction I feel we’re heading under unfettered capitalism.)
However, I also don’t trust the state to have too much power and am thus not explicitly a socialist (outside of my philosophical belief in libertarian socialism as an anarchist). As such I find a market-based economy acceptable so long as it’s very-well regulated to protect people from the whims of corporations (who I trust least of all), and with an extensive social safety net (or better yet, UBI) to go with it. Functionally, in practice, I’m on the left side of social democracy with a touch of Marxism thrown in, but in a few very specific economic areas I lean more to the right. There’s way more to it than that, but as you can see I’m all over the place and as much as I find political tests fun, none can ever properly place me on their spectrum. I suspect I’m not alone - people who give this stuff a reasonable degree of thought are unlikely to be so easily packaged up into neat little boxes.
Anyway, thank you for posting this quiz, and I genuinely appreciate the conversation. I have a degree in political science but don’t get to discuss it as much as I’d like these days other than the few times a year I get together with friends. (Or with friendly strangers online.)
You are very welcome!
I’m glad to be able to be of appreciation, as I know how that is - looks like you are in the right place to discuss political science though!
In the interest of conversation, maybe you can explain or point me to an explanation of why Anarchism vs. Marxism is considered “idealism vs materialism” in sociology?
In Psychology, we had an “idealism vs materialism” debate, but it is mostly resolved with a sort of “idealistic materialism” or “materialistic idealism” where, essentially, “idealism <=> materialism”, as I understand it.
I’m curious about what the current state of the art is, in that debate!
Either way, I’ll definitely spend some time in !politics@lemmy.ml checking things out.
That’s a very interesting question, but unfortunately one I don’t have much input on myself. I’ve always understood materialism as a belief that everything can be, in theory, explained by science (or in the somewhat-related Epicurean understanding that everything is comprised of atoms). As such, its counterpart would be something along the lines of spiritualism rather than idealism. I’m certain that my understanding of materialism must be a specific definition of perhaps a different concept entirely than that which you’ve brought up. I don’t have a great deal of formal knowledge of sociology or psychology. Likewise, I’ve studied a fair bit of political philosophy but nothing that I can think of which touches on this specific topic. Nonetheless, you’ve piqued my interest and I expect I’ll be heading down a rabbit hole tonight.
Well, please do share what you find!
You are on the right track w/ idealism vs materialism in psychology, at least.
The question there arose from the brain: how do you rectify the mind/soul with the brain/body? Dualism apparently fails (the idea that there is a separate mind from the brain) which leaves only some form of monism. A sort of hybrid materialism-idealism seems to make the most sense, where consciousness is a property of the universe, like time or space, and different entities have differing consciousnesses. In that sort of a philosophy, when talking about the brain of a person you are equally talking about the experience that person is having, just in different terms.
I suspect that in sociology that would be some sort of unified anarcho-marxism, if such a thing exists. The atomic theory of society seems to be the thing where they are working on unifying language. If society is fully atomized, asking whether a new society arises due to free choice or resource demands is like asking whether rivers rise due to rain or sewer overflow, if that makes sense?
That’s all very interesting and something I will definitely be looking up. While I have little knowledge of psychology myself, I do find it fascinating - especially stuff like this that touches on the idea of consciousness. While I’m a believer in approaching everything scientifically, I hold some explicitly non-scientific theistic beliefs that are at odds with this approach (and which I admit essentially amount to hoping there’s more than we’re capable of understanding ourselves). That brings to mind some of what you said there regarding that sort of dichotomy (as I’m understanding it) of physical biology vs the workings of the mind.
This part is still definitely confusing me though:
Is the idea here essentially a question of whether social progress (for better or worse) is essentially pre-determined by geography in some fatalistic way?
I’ll definitely be digging into this a bit over the coming days and may ask my wife her thoughts on the psychological side of what you said earlier. She’s a former psych nurse, so while not at all a psychologist at least has more background in this stuff than I do.
I think there’s a way to follow people on Lemmy (?) so I’ll see if I can do that to keep in touch with you via private messages. Or, I recently got around to setting up a mastodon account. If you happen to use that, feel free to link up with me that way so we can keep in touch (if you’d like). I’m at @herrcaptain@geekdom.social