Political Compass

The political compass was described as a measure of attitudes and inevitable human contradictions to provide a more integrated definition of where people and parties are really at. Before the political compass, the right-left continuum was used to describe the political stance of people. On the left extreme of the continuum stood people who favored a collectivism view or communism, and on the right extreme stood people who favored a more libertarianism view. The flaw with the right-left continuum system is that it placed people based on their economic views and did not recognize the social aspect of political views. The political compass addressed this matter by incorporating a social continuum along with the economic continuum already used. On one extreme of the social continuum stood people with a centralized view of society or fascism, and on the other extreme stood people with a more liberal view of society or anarchism. The political compass test drew out the values of people through the use of many dilemma questions that could be argued both ways. Even though there were no right or wrong answers to the questions, I could not help but ask myself why I answered many of the questions the way I did.

According to the test, I was around the middle of the compass. I was not surprised by my results because I did not answer “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree” to any of the questions. I felt that since every question could be argued either way, I could not strongly position myself with one side of any question because I did want to ignore the arguments made for the other side of the question. What did surprise me though was the questions regarding sex because I did not see what they had to do with politics.

I am glad that I was around the middle of the compass and not to any extreme in any category. I feel that in the end what is right and what is wrong is all a matter of ones perspective. What I did not fully understand while taking the test, was whether it was my personal perspectives or the perspectives of my society and those around me that influenced my answers more.

To take the Political compass test, follow this link
http://www.politicalcompass.org/analysis