3-D politics

 This morning, I took the Political Compass test, because supposedly, 'There's abundant evidence for the need of it.'

The idea is to give derive a graphical depiction of one's political tastes from their responses to a designed set of propositions. The graph runs positively and negatively on two axes rather than one, to give a more integrated illustration than the old 'left and right': from Fascism to Anarchism, and from communism to neo-liberalism. Whatever that is.  

Both Gandhi and Stalin were from the political 'left', yet distinguishing them isn't difficult. That suggests that a more multi-dimensional approach to placing personalities in political boxes is needed.

The test is good fun but laughably crude. The questions range from the philosophical ('The enemy of my enemy is my friend', 'Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified') to the practical ('Marijuana should be legalised', 'Abortion, when the woman's life is not threatened, should always be illegal') to the apparently irrelevant ('Abstract art that doesn't represent anything shouldn't be considered art at all', 'Astrology accurately explains many things').

The professor of social history who helped design the test will find it difficult to explain the value of our response to propositions like, 'Some people are naturally unlucky'.

One problem is that because you can't express indifference to any proposition, I found myself overcompensating, which must have skewed my result. And if the purpose was to add nuance to political categorisation, then why is Mahmoud Abbas right next to Pope Benedict XVI? And unless they are exceptionally well-connected, how did the designers position the world leaders anyway?

What is needed is a Z-axis. How about obedience to international law? Perhaps a little hard to measure. Maybe degree of identification with a global community? Hmm, that might be incorporated already. Or perhaps the third dimensional axis should be one's degree of religious zeal? That would solve the Pope-Abu Mazen problem, and accurately reflect plenty of important political distinctions today.

You can take the test here.