As for where I stand...

I have just received some interesting insight into my character from that font of all modern knowledge, the internet. If I’m reading the results of the quiz I just took on politicalcompass.org, I am, politically speaking, some combination of Stalin and Ghandi.

According to the results of the test, based on my answers to six or so pages of questions meant to gage political leanings, I’m about as leftist as the Russian dictator and even more Libertarian than the Indian spiritual leader. Apparently this position on the spectrum puts me in good company, with Nelson Mandela and the Dhali Lama occupying similar spots on in the same quadrant.

The puzzling thing is, going into the quiz, I would have guessed that my results would have been significantly less extreme, as I find that my take on given issues tends to be more scattered than in line with any particular ideology. In an attempt to discover whether the test was designed to put you at one extreme or another, rather than accurately reflect your ideals, I went back redid the quiz, ‘disagreeing’ with all the statements, no matter if they contradicted each other or not. This way, I ended up with much more moderate results on the spectrum, and was forced to reflect that, at least in terms of those particular fifty or so questions, my views are much more extremist than I realised.

The thought then occurred that perhaps this it is perfectly natural to assume that one’s views are moderate and centrist than they really are. After all, any human being starts out with the assumption that their way of looking at things, their personal ideology is ‘right’ and perhaps it’s a natural leap from there to assume its therefore widely shared. It could be that people realise their extremist only by closely reflecting on the things that they believe, and that internet spectrum compass quizzes are potentially a great tool for getting people to moderate their views.

It is, after all, a rather upsetting thing to have your political leanings linked to the ‘bad guys’ in history. I certainly don’t want to think of myself as likely to have voted for Stalin, if given the opportunity.

(The quiz I took is at http://www.politicalcompass.org/test )