September 10, 2012

  • Your political compass

    Economic Left/Right: -6.50
    Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -6.87

    This is actually not mine. 'Tis my sister's. I had posted my results, last I took a political test, here: http://thirst2.xanga.com/756767336/item/.

    Using the same test for comparison, my sister basically doubles both scores that I got for each respective measurement. That's interesting to me because I always had the impression that my sister was more conservative than I (though I had a hunch she would become more liberal as she got older). While I've certainly never shied away from giving a political opinion, I wouldn't ever say we're politically analogous (actually, that's blatantly obvious seeing as I now have two different test results here), and I've been very certain to allow her to form her own political opinions (or any opinions in general).

    I suppose the confusion comes from the fact that, while I tend to lean to an environmentalist side (I go about recycling with the same boy scout sense of duty that I do safe sex information, for those who know me or have read my few posts regarding contraception; insist on CFLs; back advancements towards alternative energy; etc.), my sister has always been exceedingly more vocal and forceful about that than I ever am (I'm pretty certain the way most people notice for me is my insistence on recycling or by assumption with my association as a liberal; while I have plenty of friends vocal about the environment, I'll usually do no more than vote about it in regards to other environmental issues).

    Part of this has to do with the simple fact that I consider the protection of human life to be the more pressing issue, most generally; once that is resolved, we can then move towards focusing our attention more fully to animal abuses and the like (though I consider the position that both are of equal importance to be a perfectly acceptable morality, occasionally wavering towards that one from time to time). My sister, on the other hand, tends to lean more towards the environment and animal life, from what I've gathered. She's routinely said that she is adverse to humanity (though, putting aside that I find nothing which humanity has done to be any worse than what I see in the wild by animal life, I have a hard time understanding where this adversity comes from; while I often chaffed from my parents saying offhandedly a racist/sexualist/occasionally-sexist comment (interestingly, my sister responds with the same agitation more from other people saying such things than from her parents making the same remarks, on average), I never saw this as an indication of the whole of humanity being awful); she's said she's unsure about bringing more children into a world as bad as it currently is (for some reason, I remember this comment indicating that the world was heading towards an end, based off of my reaction being that I don't see that as remotely happening soon or that the world is as bad as that, though I remember the exact wording as I've put it). She's against zoos, though I partially think that's because she's applying the same notion of freedom that humans enjoy to animals, an understandable idea which completely – regardless – misunderstands the instinct of survival that fuels evolution and, thus, makes zoos a haven for animals; I mean to get her to read The Life of Pi to help her understand that.

    The significance of all of that is that I expected her to be not as concerned with things regarding human governance. And, since we do live in a center-right culture (or maybe that's just because I'm from the Midwest), I expected her to take more conservative positions unthinkingly (because she's young, just as I was once) because that's what she's been raised in.

    I'm pleased to see otherwise.