11.2.2021

-

 Today due to technological problems, we opted to taking a political compass test. This was established in 2001, and has been used by numerous academics, journals and newspapers as an indicator to distinguish people's political views based on social and economic stances. The results are curated into a two way graph with the x axis being Left and Right, and the Y axis being Authoritarian or Libertarian. Before I wasn't sure and found it hard to distinguish between left, libertarian, right, and authoritarian. However, by experiencing this test, I recognized that left and right are merely just representations of economical views, and the latter being social issues. When I looked at the political compass of the recent US presidential candidates, I was very surprised that the so called democratic politicians such as Barack Obama and Joe Biden were right leaning and authoritarian like Donald Trump. In contrary, those who were left and libertarian were unheard of, which made me come to a conclusion that successful politicians are inevitably one sided towards corporate prioritization. However, it made sense as in order to succeed in a campaign, would require extraordinary sums of money that can only be obtained from rich investors and business owners. And by executing policies that are preferable to them are a way of paying back during the election. I wonder how the organizers of the political compass were able to plot the positions of such politicians accurately, because from an ordinary person like me, I was easily fooled by their title, rather than their policies in reality. I found it very ironic that the democracy that we so care for is an accumulation of unaware citizens voting towards diametrically opposed political tycoons. 

When I took the test, I was placed roughly in the left and libertarian category. I felt that this was predictable, as many of the questions were quite extreme such as illegalizing abortion and rights to religion, as well as corporate value. When comparing with my friends, I also found similarities in where we were positioned. Curious to understand the mindsets of the politicians today, we decided to retake the test but answer as extreme and radical as possible. I ached as some of the decision I made were completely off my virtues. For the economical and nationalistic questions, I made sure that I agreed with everything that prioritizes the nation and profit. In addition, the religious and moral beliefs were pretty extreme as well. In the end, I ended up being near the political stance of Donald Trump. When discussing the results with Mr. Paterson, I was able to acknowledge the gap between demands of the people and the politicians. I couldn't fathom what the political compass of Japaense parties would be. I bet they wouldn't be as spaced out compared to other countries, because even I can't find distinguishable characteristics of the communist party from first impressions. A bit off topic, but browsing through the political compass website, I found a political compass of famous musicians and composers (see picture below). As a violinist myself, it was intriguing to picture my favorite composers having political views. Intrestingly, when I looked at this plot, I found that the majority of composers I played were in the left and liberal positions. Isn't it coincidential, that I end up playing composers with similar political views as mine. Anyways, that might have been just luck, but I wondered if other musicians correlate with me.  


My political compass


Composers' political extravaganza


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5.7.2019

-
When I attended my first semester at an International school, we were all assigned with our own blog, so I learned to design my own website and to reflect my thoughts, instead of reciting facts. I used a different blog engine, in which we were freely able to change the background and add our favorite quotes in the given space, so we didn’t excatly learn the how of creating a blog. At first, I was unsure of using blogger, since I was already used to using the other website. However, it turned out to be quite easy to set up a blog account  and I espeically enjoyed revamping the web design. I also liked the explanation of why it’s important to note our feelings down, and I totally agree with that idea. Since feelings are something that changes in a short period of time, it would be hard to track every moment in your memory, so by recording it out digitally, I think it will become handy when reflecting back on my experiences. Mr. Paterson talked about how our memory is kept roughly ...
Read more

3.3.2022 - Thank you for the 3 years!!!! (2019~2022)

-
 Today's topic was the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia. When we were first asked to talk with our groups on this topic, I was excited because I had watched a video about this last week. From what I recall, this video on the crisis was more pro-Ukraine, so I was able to gain a neutral view by listening to Paterson's explanation on how this war is understandable. The video I watched discussed how the ways Russia is reasoning the war is unacceptable. A statement Russia has been saying is about how Ukraine belongs to Russia. This is true, saying that Ukraine was a part of the Soviet Union, and how Crimea is culturally Russia's. However, it also coined how during Stalin's governing of the Soviet Union, millions of Ukrainians died in a deliberate famine caused by Stalin himself. This was to replace the small farms with their state farms. So even if a big portion of the Ukrainian population has Russian roots and can speak Russian fluently, we have to consider that there...
Read more

9.3.2020

-
 In this class, we continued to practice our presentations because we ended off in the middle of someone's book review presentation. From the last class, I practiced with a timer and was able to talk within 8 minutes. Moreover, it was the fact that I added my credibility and limitations that helped stretch out the time from last time. This ended up working out, as for the second time I presented today, I was able to talk in 7 and a half minutes. I also rethought the number of slides especially during the summary, because, at that time, I had an overwhelming amount of slides there, mainly from not using any of the animation features that were included in google slides. However, even if I had used animations, I still felt like I was diving into too much information. This is why I reduced unnecessary or overused information in order to make room for the biography. Something that I am still wary about is my information on the author. In other classmate's presentations, the author w...
Read more