So, I decided to do an exercise in which I mapped the 6 ideologies from understanding the times to see where they are on a political compass. And this actually turned out to be an interesting exercise that kind of shows some weird flaws/quirks with the political compass, but also some weird quirks with the ideologies. That said, I'd like to get into it.
Christianity (Conservative)- +5/+5
Christianity was moderately auth right. It didn't make extreme authoritarian because to do that you need to be three things simultaneously: authoritarian, religious, and racist. Given conservative Christianity is only two of these things, it got fairly auth. it also was very right wing, being a strong supporter of capitalism.
Obviously, not all Christianity is conservative Christianity. While most forms likely have similar authoritarian tendencies, on economics they vary a lot and I could see a lot of forms of Christianity having varying scores on economics.
But for the sake of this quiz, the attitudes shared were similar to post 1980 modern conservatism.
Islam -3/+4
Islam was weird. To some extent, the mild left wing economic attitudes are not that outrageous, but being slightly less authoritarian (or roughly about as) was kind of weird. I generally consider Islam to be a more authoritarian religion than christianity. Christians might wanna impose their views on others, but Islam is a lot more violent about it and more likely to give the death penalty over minor sleights against their religion. But, because they were potentially less authoritarian on things like government spying (probably wouldn't like it as much given the war on terror), they ended up slightly less auth than Christianity. Wait until you get to Marxism-Leninism if you think that's weird.
On economics, I went with them being mild left because a lot of them live in the global south and essentially likely have some attitudes toward social justice on economics, opposing the American military and economic machine, for example. Whereas America is rather far right on the economic scale especially in its international operations, religions like islam and even most non american fundamentalist forms of christianity generally lean more center left, toward say, a form of social democracy. Just thought it was interesting, I expect it to be more center.
Marxism-Leninism- -10/+3
I feel like I answered this particular iteration of the political compass like a psychopath but I only ended up with +3 on the auth scale. What gives?
Well...remember what I said about needing to be authoritarian, racist, and religious to get a high score? Marxism Leninism is virulently anti religion. So I went very strong on the anti religion sentiment...which made me LESS auth. And Marxism-Leninism is...ideally not racist. Like, marxists in my experience are really hard on racism and hate the concept of it. Although I understand the reality is a lot different in practice. For example, the Han Chinese are extremely racist toward other cultures, and the Russians are known for using ethnic minorities for their more...disposable tasks. Still, on attitudes alone, trying to adhere to the philosophical ideal being not racist made the results more moderate.
You really can't get a high auth score on this test unless you're like full on fascist where you're authoritarian, religious, AND racist. It's actually a flaw because marxism leninism is arguably as authoritarian as fascism is. But because its attitudes are different on two of those three topics, it just didn't go full auth.
On economics, the 10 is no surprise though. That test was literally made for marxist leninist doctrine to get a perfect left wing score.
Post Modernism- -8/-5
Post modernism on the other hand, had no issue getting fairly lib. It is a form of "alt lib left", known as "orange lib left" on political compass related forums, as it exists on the spectrum but kind of doesnt fit other surrounding ideologies, as if there should be another axis to describe it. But I would say it is, much like Marxism-Leninism, a bit more authoritarian. Just not in the tradition way. They are kind of like the left wing version of the culture wars, often pushing lib left ideas in weird authoritarian ways, in which if you aren't on board with them you deserve sanctioning. But...political compass doesn't really consider you auth if you arent some combination of normal statist authoritarian, religious, and racist. And given they're not many of those things they got a lot more lib.
On economics they were very left wing, just not as much so as the Marxists though.
Secular Humanism- -4/-4
Secular humanism ended up pretty much where I actually am in my results, around -4/-4, maybe just slightly more conservative than me. I did answer a little differently than I would personally answer, recognizing i deviate from the bog standard version in some ways and not wanting to impose my exact views on it, but this led to me just answering 90% of the questions the same anyway. But generally speaking secular humanism was the most moderate worldview overall, being more based on reason and evidence, and that having somewhat of a liberal bias. Generally permissive, generally mildly left wing but not extremely so.
Cosmic Humanism- -5/-5
Cosmic Humanism was very difficult to place on a traditional compass. I mean, it is a very apolitical ideology. But in trying my best to put my cosmic humanist cap on, I ended up with -5/-5 or so. Understanding the times portrayed it as almost anarchist, but for the sake of the compass it really didn't share significantly different attitudes from post modernism or secular humanism. And on economics, I guess the stereotype for me is some like hippie lady who has fairly left wing views and cares about the environment so it ended up a tad more progressive that way too.
Discussion
Honestly, I feel like this taught me more about the flaws of the political compass more than the flaws of Understanding the Times. While the left right axis seemed properly calibrated (the only reason the only ideology on the right was Christianity was because Understanding the Times was the only die hard capitalist ideology in the book, with the others being liberal to socialist in practice), the authoritarian axis is wonky. Generally speaking, it seemed very opposed to extremes, where you had to answer extremely psychotically to go more than 5 in either direction. You simply CANT get an extreme auth score unless you're a literal Nazi or fascist. But on the other hand, it's hard to get an extreme lib score too as most people would avoid the kind of extreme statements needed to get that far. I used to think that political compass has a lib bias, but I'm not really sure if it does given even the obvious lib ideologies weren't extreme lib either.
It was also kind of weird how a lot of the auth attitudes of American Christians aren't much different than Islam or Marxism Leninism, who actually seemed less consistently authoritarian on the compass in some ways. Of course, the test was a measure of attitudes more than policy. Despite Christianity being arguably less authoritarian in my opinion than Marxism Leninism or Islam in practice, it didn't differ significantly from them on the compass and if anything came off as more auth as it seemed a bit closer to the archetype of a fascist than the other ideologies.
Political compass is an interesting test, but this exercise expressed some of its quirks to me.
Should other worldviews exist?
This is something I've been kind of wondering about for a while, but given this exercise, let's ignore some of the most obvious blind spots in the book: the entire lib right part of the compass, and extreme authoritarianism.
I kind of wondered if maybe white nationalism or fascism really deserved its own ideology separate from Christianity, given the version of Christianity in that book is the kind of American conservative fundamentalist variety associated with the republican party. But, as we know, with the rise of Donald Trump, the alt right has arisen. And that version of conservatism IS authoritarian, religious, AND racist. But it really does seem the big definiing belief of this is racism. Fundamentality Christianity isnt inherently racist as I understand it, and generally believes all humans are god's creation. Individual believers can have deeply racist beliefs as a product of American conservative culture, which always had that undercurrent post 1968, but it was never explicit. The alt right is more explicit. It's a lot like this, if Christianity and secular humanism are two sides of the same coins and existential foes of each other, the alt right's existential foe is postmodernism instead.
Still, the only meaningful dimension in which the alt right is more extreme is race. It's possible they are a bit more authoritarian too, but honestly, despite conservative Christians' calls for small government, they never practiced those beliefs outside of economics. And given the Bush regime, a lot of the authoritarian tendencies present in the political compass were present back then. So I'm not sure. It's possible you could argue for fascism to be taught as a worldview the way postmodernism is (they are polar opposite ideological foes), but just as secular humanism and postmodernism have a lot of overlap, so do regular conservatism and fascism.
The other worldview I have wondered if it should be added is say, right libertarianism. NONE of the 6 ideologies fit well into that quadrant at all. but when i think about what right libertarianism is...it's ALSO an offshoot of American Christianity, just with less authoritarian attitudes on issues like government overreach and enforcement of social issues. They don't really fall far from the same tree, and many libertarians are still Christians. They just don't agree with government enforcing religion or the actions of the Bush administration.
So...a lot of the right actually is more similar than it looks like. Many of them are just different variations of the same worldview. Fascism is a more authoritarian alternative to it, and libertarianism is a more libertarian alternative to it.
Alternatively, a lot of right libertarians are also atheists and operate off of a secular humanist framework. Take objectivism which was pushed by atheist Ayn Rand. So some secularists can end up being right libertarians too. Right libertarianism isn't really its own ideology as much as it seems to be where conservative Christianity and secular humanism meet. The right wing secularists like the economic positions of the conservative worldview, and the libertarian Christians like the libertarianism of secular humanism. It's kind of a weird blending of the two worldviews rather than a unique worldview itself.
The same can be said of say, left wing anarchism, which might have a weird blending of marxist, secular, and postmodern worldviews.
Like, despite the positions expressed on the compass here, the varying worldviews can exist on a spectrum. Christianity (conservatism) can be more authoritarian or libertarian, or even more left wing, as left wing Christians exist outside of American fundamentalist Christianity. Islam likely can do the same, although it likely is a relatively auth center religion overall. Marxism Leninism can get even more auth if it embraces racism (see: China) or conservative attitudes on social issues associated with religion for example. Secular humanism can vary widely. A lot of lefties are likely mixes of humanism, marxism leninism, and postmodernism these days. A lot of postmodernists are also marxists. Many are humanists. On the flip side, as I said, secularists can end up finding their ways onto the right wing of the spectrum instead. perhaps applying the worldviews to the political compass is kind of sloppy because there are so many possible variants that none of them necessarily agree.
Conclusion
Anyway, I just thought this would be a nice exercise. Idk if I'll do this again with another compass like sapply, but I doubt it. Part of the issues with this was the political compass itself, but part of it was also the worldviews not necessarily having solid views on a lot of subjects at hand.
