Critical Bail Bonds

fuckyeahemergence:

melissikins:

whakahekeheke:

Leftism vs. Right-wingers, and the stupidity of every political “spectrum”

What plagues humanity is the staying power of bad ideas. Concepts that are logically irrational or nonsensical can stick around in popular thought indefinitely if the social psychological conditions remain in place. The “left” versus “right” dichotomy is one such concept – one that is both irrational and nonsensical, yet pervasive. It’s how many people talk about “politics” and it is completely stupid.

Consider the most basic point: what exactly is “left” and what exactly is “right?” Dictionaries tend to only offer for definition, for instance, that leftism means “the principles and views of the left” whereas rightism means “the principles and views of the right.” They do not usually specify what those “principles and views” are, and for good reason: there are no such ‘principles and views,’ there are none that are necessarily right-wing but not leftist or viceversa.

The terms are largely arbitrary. They can mean anything or nothing, and often do. What is “left” to you may be “right” to me, or to my grandpa, or to a person in another state or country or in a different language.

Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers’ Party (“Nazis”) are often cited as an example of the “extreme right-wing,” but they are also less often cited as an example of the “extreme leftism.” Self-identified leftists may refer to Josef Stalin and his Communist Party as “right-wing,” yet he is more usually put forward as an exemplar of “extreme leftism” by others. You can’t even get the extremes clearly defined…

At the root of this confusion is the very concept of an aggregated, one-dimensional left-right spectrum of positions itself. It is inanely childish, an oversimplification to the point of being worse than nothing. (Worse because it creates artificial division, confusion, groupthink, etc.) If it were an accurate representation of the differences between human positions on the sociopolitical world, imagine the epiphanic moment of its discovery: “My God! A line!”

Various political scientists have attempted to refine the concept into a form that actually means something. MIT political scientist David Nolan popularized the so-called Nolan Chart, where economic and civil liberty are the two axes and left-right is the diagonal:

This Nolan Chart is less stupid, but it’s still stupid because actual sociopolitical positions (statist, libertarian, socialist, etc.) exist on different levels of complexity and what all “political spectrum” visualizations miss, among other things, is importantly the matching of means to ends. Two people may want the same ends, but argue different means to those ends as logically optimal. A simple graphing of means to the same ends is not a question of personal position or identity, but one of communication, evidence, and logic. To adhere to some means to an end based on some attraction to the means other than its likelihood of bringing about the ends is irrational.

Furthermore, of course, people have differently prioritized ends, which are not aggregatable as Kenneth Arrow won a Nobel prize for demonstrating… and this is assuming “left” or “right” really even are positions, as opposed to

• geocultural background (I grew up a small town in the South, naturally I’m a conservative) or
• aspirations of social identity (I want to show people I’m a cultured urbanite so I’m man of the left) or 
• personal identity or emotive labeling (I care about people. I feel I’m of the left, it’s part of who I am) or
• a perceived general attitude about the world (I’m for America, I’m a patriot, I’m of the right)

or various other things unrelated to the actual substance of the positions. With regards to the substance of sociopolitical positions, political spectra in general and the “left” vs. “right” dichotomy in particular are non-concepts. They add absolutely nothing to the discussion. They distract and confuse everything, turning a means-ends discussion into a signalling battle of personal identities and group loyalties… and in a perfect world they would have been abandoned long ago.

Leftism and rightism are not positions at all and, even if they were, a one-dimensional line would not be a sensible way to compare them. Alas, “left vs. right” persists in popular thought and discourse to detriment of critical thinking.

There’s actually a good amount of psychological research that has been done looking at the underlying priniciples and views of left vs. right political orientations. Noelle-Neuman (1998) describes a political orientation as a set of beliefs and values that work together as an approach to social justice. Left and right political orientations are essentially opposing belief systems about power (Topalova, 1997). Issues endorsed by leftists, such as disarmament and broadening social welfare, emphasize principles of community and interdependence between individuals and nations. In contrast, issues endorsed by the right such as strengthening national security and laissez-faire economic policies focus on increasing personal and national agency, independence and autonomy (Farwell & Weiner, 2000; Noelle-Neuman, 1998). This doesn’t describe the whole enormous diversity of political opinions, certainly, but it does show that left and right are meaningful signifiers. 

Citations

Farwell, L. & Weiner, B. (2000). Bleeding hearts and the heartless: Popular perceptions of liberal and conservative ideologies. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 26, 845-852.

Noelle-Neumann, E. (1998). A shift from the right to the left as an indicator of value change: A battle for the climate of opinion. International Journal of Public Opinion, 10, 317-334.

Topalova, V. (1997). Individualism/collectivism and social identity. Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, 7, 53-64.

Surveys asking people about their own political identity are irrelevant to the post…

If Noelle-Neuman “describes a political orientation as a set of beliefs and values that work together as an approach to social justice,” that’s nice but again not relevant at all. Many many people (including numerous academics) have their own idiosyncratic and oft-conflicting definitions of “left” vs. “right,” which they usually fashion to favor their own personal identity and group loyalties.

For instance, Topalova (according to you) defines “left and right political orientations” as “essentially opposing belief systems about power.” So either left v. right is essentially about approaches to social justice (Noelle-Neuman) or opposing belief systems about power (Topalova). Those are different words because they mean different things, though both “social justice” and “power” are so vague as to be practically meaningless without explicit technical definition themselves.

People do use leftism and right-wing to mean things. They are not pure gibberish. However they are not useful for communication of logical, means-to-ends positions or arguments on the sociopolitical. Rather they tend to inhibit critical thinking and encourage irrational identity politics, partisan superficiality, and debates restricted to an unnecessarily dichotomized set of options.

Also, I just read your Farwell & Weiner paper and I have to say I forgot how incredibly bad the papers in lower-end psych journals are:

Study 1

Method

Participants. Ninety-six students taking an undergraduate course in psychology completed the materials at the end of a regularly scheduled class meeting. Participation was voluntary and the respondents were assured of their anonymity.

So we’re talking about a written survey on political identity from a self-selected sample taken out of some undergrad psych class and the end of a period. Not randomized, not blinded. Can’t be extrapolated to anything significant at all about any general population. Same for Study 2. This is the exact methodological equivalent to some teacher saying “here’s what some of the students in my class who had nothing better to do said.” Completely worthless.

(via whakatikatika)