Diary On Red Green Blue
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Title
What Color Are You, Politically?
An Idea to Replace the Left v. Right Frame
Politics as Colors
Above The Fold
The origin of "left wing and right wing" as a range to describe politics dates to the French National Assembly, in which the Aristocracy sat to the right and the workers representatives sat to the left. This spectrum is old and tired, not that it's without any function. One attempt to increase it's flexibility is the well known "political compass" technique of using two axes, one from authoritarian to libertarian and one from communist economics to laissez faire on the other.
This chart is a big improvement. These two scales are independent and make valid axes to make a plot. The political position has more dimensions than just those two, in fact, and any given chart is really a projection onto a particular policy domain as described in the definition of the elements of the system.
And "RGB" approach uses the nature of mixing primary colors of light to make a color as one does on a standard monitor. In this system, instead of two axes you have three, and instead of using scale to plot a three dimensional point (which could also be done), each scale is used as input into the RGB formula for the primary colors of light.
Each color represents a type of solution principle, the three represented are the concepts of stewardship, beligerance, and pragmatism.
The color representations are numbers from 0 to 100% (0-255 for html colors) as follows:
- Green - Stewardship
You have to take care of things, a devout environmentalist believing it's mankinds role to caretake all the earth's living creatures and formations of beauty.
- Red - Beligerance
Sometimes you have to fight. Fight fight fight. You know the drill. You have to fight for your rights, it's hard work but sometimes that's what it takes. Full on 100% Beligerance is to apply this principle to every subject, to tend toward war, less of it might be standing up to speak your mind or fighting by the rules of some arbitrating system like the democratic system of the legal system.
- Blue - Practical Considerations Only
It's a bit cold, but simple reason, what works works, ideals are flexible. Is pure blue without ideals... no, there are still the goals, so there is an ethical basis for limiting compromise on certain ideals, but there are no sacred cows and indeed there are a vast array of compromises on pure principles, like a republican raising taxes. A practical nature admits to functional needs and available methodologies.
Extended Section
The Points of the Triangle, extremes
Although the absolute points imply extremity, that is, no contribution from other concerns, it's also true that putting a little green or blue in your red is not always particularly noticeable, you still appear red to the eye. So while a devout steward may not totally eschew situational pragmatics, and may favor war in some situations, for all intents and purposes they can still appear quite solidly green.
The Secondary Colors
Yellow
The Dominionist Right (or as we like to say, the "religious wrong") are, by this scale, Yellow. They support beligerant attitudes, killing the heathens, crusades and war in physical and rhetorical terms, but also support the stewardship solutions of theocratic inspiration.
Violet
Purple. Good old purple. This is the politics of America, a mixture of pragmatism, and a belief in social infrastructure wherever it makes sense, but also an idea that one has to fight, war, struggle and take a stand backed by force, even if sometimes the "war" is rhetorical. We are here, I think, because we have bought into the left-right political spectrum, otherwise we would have a more broad understanding of nuance in political positions.
Cyan, Sky Blue
An idealistic philosophy in which pragmatism is mixed with a certain ideology of stewardship. Compromise on principle to achieve political gains is acceptable, but the notion that we are shepards of the planet, on behalf of ourselves, our future generations, and all its living creatures and natural beauty is never forgotten.
Tertiary Colors
Orange
This is a group more inclined towards beligerant solutions and less toward stewardship. They take values as a given, perhaps thinking we all know right from wrong inately, and while they acknowledge the principles of stewardship, they put in an extra measure of just going ahead and fighting for what you, somehow, feel you know. NASCAR dads that don't go to church, but who figure the Pastor must be an above average man.
Problems with the current leftright political spectrum.
- The left right spectrum does not chart most people well.
- Truly moderate or pragmatic middle positions are not represented on the left right gradient.
- The extremes are to much promoted... the spectrum idealizes extremes as "pure". A real spectral approach characterizes the extremes as "simple".
- Right means conservative and well known, left means experimental and theoretical, the right benefits from an assumption of familiarity even when it's neoconservatism which is a reform movement trying to restructure things on entirely new formulations.
- Stalinism ruined "leftism" as a term
- Right means "correct", common language is against us
- ... ?
If you contribute to this list, I will add your items to <a href="http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Red_Green_Blue_Wings">a related dkosopedia page</a>.
Poll
What Political Color Would You Be?
- Blue
- Red
- Green
- Purple
- Yellow
- Cyan
- Grey
- Black
- White
- Orange
- Yellow Green
- Pink
- Blue Purple
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