After killing some time while waiting for another class to start at University, I came across the following Political Attitudes test. It had been one I took a while back, and I managed to stumble across it again. The URL is www.politicalcompass.org
It's curious to see how ones beliefs and opinions on matters can change so profoundly over the course of only a few years. According to this test, when I originally took it two years ago my political attitudes were more in line with a Red Tory: strong government involvement in the economy and socially conservative. Now I seem to be more in line with a liberal egalitarian: personal freedom, small government becoming involved in the economy only in a moderate role to ensure some measure of social justice.
One peculiar thing, however, about these political attitudes quizzes is that they also take into account the personal biases of the person designing the test. The questions tend to be more normative and qualitative. Stuff like "The government has no place in the bedroom." The test then asks you to either "Strongly Agree", "Agree", "Disagree" or "Strongly Disagree" with this very interpretative question. The example stood out in my mind and might not be the best choice to illustrate my point, but it seems that the political attitudes of the test designer are highly reflected in the results received by the people taking the test. To a left-wing socialist, I might find myself being placed on the right-side of the spectrum of ideologies. To a neo-conservative, I will probably be judged as a socialist bringing my crazy ideas from Europe with me like the carrier of some viscious disease.
In other words, take political attitudes tests with a grain of salt. They over-simplify very complex systems of philosophy and world-view. Even calling someone a "liberal egalitarian", precise a term as that might seem, is over-generalization. What is a "liberal"? The word "liberal" is usually defined in everyday language as "numerous" or "generous". For example, "He fired into the forest, liberally." Or "He is very liberal with his money." This could mean that a liberal would promote "liberal", that is to say "numerous", controls over the economy of a country through Crown Corporations, public works projects and heavy taxation/susidization. But liberal is also conceived of as being "forward-thinking" and "socially progressive". Forward thinking? In what society? In Iran, forward thinking would be questioning the current social status of women as being "half of a man" in terms of legal rights. In Canada, forward thinking might be construed as... well, I don't think we've decided what forward thinking is yet. European Union ascension? Gay marriage? Legalized marijuana? The Political Compass says I should be libertarian on all of those things as I'm a very mild liberal. But there's only one of those three things that appeals to me and it definitely has nothing to do with drugs that could drastically damage my liver, brain and lungs nor does it have anything to do with forcing religious figures to perform ceremonies that are against their moral conscience. If you haven't guessed it yet, I'm a big fan of the EU and believe firmly that Canada would be better served through closer economic and political ties to Europe than to the United States.
The reason for this rant? Ambiguity of political language. One man's liberal is another's conservative. Political Attitudes tests are good fun for wasting time and entertaining notions about whether you really could be compared to the Green Party in Germany and at the same time be as socially libertarian as Nelson Mandela. Quizzes that claim to be the be all and end all of determing political ideology are jokes. And, to a degree, it does a discredence to the discipline of Political Science when there are no fundamentally univeral terms by which we can associate different people's beliefs into roughly working systems without confusing the heck out of everyone else in our field. But, then again, we probably don't want to wind up with such specific terms as Philosophy that we wind up losing our breath when referring to our own self-label. "Deontological liberal egalitarian with utopia-welfarist tendencies" somehow seems less appealing to the common voter than "liberal" or "idealist".
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3 comments:
Paul,
I was fascinated by your blog, which I came upon whilst reading up on Alberta (as a Brit shortly moving to Edmonton). I tried the political compass and agree that it is probably broken - or else I filled it in wrong. Whilst Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama feel like good company to be in, I'm not sure that it really describes me....
I'd be really interested in any suggestions you might have as to how to adapt to life in Canada.
Glad to hear from you! I try to post here as often as I can, but sometimes it works out that there are long pauses between writing and then sudden mad rushes of stuff. It all just depends on what sort of free time one can dredge up.
Life in Canada, I've found, is relatively easy to adapt to. The culture is fairly similar to some parts of Britain, the language is obviously the same (except people look at you weird when you say stuff like "bloke"- learned that one the hard way). But there are some differences to perhaps be mindful of in Canada.
I've found that Canadians, at least in Calgary where I live, are far less racist than most in Britain. I lived in Cardiff and Pontypridd (small valley town in Wales, 45 minutes NW of Cardiff) and the racist sentiments were particularly tangible there. From what I hear, Wales is nowhere near as bad for that as England. So it is quite liberating to see so many people of so many different cultures interacting freely with one another, without even noticing that they have different skin colours. Britain's not some cesspool of bigotry. But the recent guffaw over some racist remarks made by the "white" actresses on "Celebrity Big Brother" on BBC (I learned about this from a friend of a friend, I don't watch those reality shows :p) against a Bollywood actress named Shilpa Shetty. It's kind of a sign that the racial hatred is on the rise in Britain. But, in Canada, it seems confined to the really rural communities- places like Grande Prairie or Fort McMurrary where the hatred probably comes more from a need to release pent up stress developed through working on the oil rigs.
I've also found that Canadians tend to be more outgoing than people from our cultural background. I know I like my personal space and don't think highly of intrusions into it. But Canadians, especially a few I know from my time in the Army, like to embrace one another. It's not cuddling or anything. Just a hug or a friendly pat on the back. But it still gets my back up. It's just something one has to get used to.
All in all, though, Canadians seem to be a pretty understanding and tolerant group of people. My only frustration is their lack of motivation, for the most part. One main thing I miss about Britain is that if people smelled something wrong, they did something about it. People were mobilized. People had morals. But Canadians will watch the news, hear about some atrocious political scandal and a huge misappropriation of funds that would make Brits go crazy. Instead of doing something about it, though, the Canadians just shrug and say, "Ah well. I knew those politicians were crooked all along. This just confirms my belief that there's no point in voting." This logic, of course, fails to take into consideration that if only the criminals vote, only the criminals get elected.
But I'm starting to blither. I hope I sort of peripherally answered your question and gave some decent suggestions somewhere in all of this. The final and ultimate advice for adapting to Canada, especially Alberta, is this: bring heavy clothing- parkas, gloves, maybe even thermal underwear (though the thermal underwear thing is kind of pushing it). It's cold here!
Thanks Paul - advice much appreciated.
It's sad to think that the reputation of the UK is being tarnished by Big Brother... It has generated an enormous amount of complaints to Channel 4 and significant coverage in the press, which is probably positive in some ways as it raises awareness of the issue and challenges the complacency of some people who think that racism is no longer an issue. I think racism in the UK is probably also a rural/urban split. From experience London is extremely diverse and a pretty tolerant kind of place, but I have heard some really offensive stuff in rural Scotland - although it's hard to generalise.
Thanks again for the advice - Jess
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