Politics. A poll in August of 2020 showed that only around 15-20% of social media users actually like seeing political posts on social media, which explains why you often here “I don’t like politics”. Of course, everyone has different interests, but I find that it is extremely important to at least BE AWARE of political happenings in the world, as they may affect you, but even if not, it is important to stay conscious of what is happening in the world. When people hear “politics”, thoughts turn to the debate of Left VS Right, who is correct? There is no one that holds the correct opinion (although many, could argue a great deal about it). This means, that although it can be difficult to refrain from projecting your “correct” views onto others, it is important to remind mindful that others have different outlooks on life and politics from you, possibly because of how they were raised, their life experiences, their morals etc. Before discussing the differences between Left vs Right wing, it is important to consider why politics is important, and why many people don't like politics.
Why is politics hated on?
The principal reason that I’ve heard for the hatred of politics is that people feel that politics and political change has very little impact on them, or that people choose to ignore these happenings, because they feel powerless to make change, or they just don’t feel a connection to what is happening. Everything is linked with politics; food prices, sports, technology, education, jobs, petrol prices and more. These things are all connected to the government, which is the centre of all political actions. This means that even if you don’t want to be, you are still affected by politics. So now that it’s clear that politics does affect everyone, but now it is important to look at despite this, why many people simply just don’t care.
1. Politics is a dirty competition
2. It’s filled with corruption
3. It is very complicated and dense
1. Politics is a dirty competition – The political system, as the name suggests, is a system. This means that it can be broken or manipulated to work in a certain way that benefits those in power, and those that they choose need to benefit. It’s not possible to work without a job, and harder to find a job without a degree. We just blame politics and Capitalism for this, and just get on with it because there is no alternative. 2. It’s filled with corruption – This is true, but it’s important to consider that just about every field has some corruption.
3. It is very complicated and dense – This is correct, however no one will remember everything about any or every political system in the world. No one has to either. However, having some knowledge of what is happening in the world, particularly in your country or area, allows you to be aware of what is affecting you, whilst holding some basics.
What is the political spectrum?
The political spectrum refers to the range of political positions or opinions that exist, from the progressive left wing, to the conservative right wing. Reminder: No matter where you exist on the political scale, no one has the “correct” opinion. This is a sliding scale, shown in the image below.
Some of the information on this image might be confusing, what is the difference between Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism? Why are there so many terms? Well to begin to understand it is first important to look at the difference between the Left Wing and the Right Wing.
Now there is a LOT of information on this, but it is actually a condensed version of the political spectrum (remember how I said politics is very complicated and dense). There are some aspects of politics that we don’t usually consider when “judging” of whether someone is Left Wing or Right Wing. For example, the list of common vocations for each political side does not mean that if you work in business you can only be Right Wing, or that all teachers are Left Wing, it is just generally where people in these vocations stand. Someone that we focus on mostly for political standpoints is the small cloud of “Support”. It is unclear exactly how accurate these percentages are, but they focus on the principal societal “issues” about LGBTQ+ Rights, abortion, tax cuts etc. It does not mean however, that if you don’t support tax cuts (as do very few Left-Wing people) you are automatically Left Wing, it’s a scale, very few people agree entirely with what their political party does. This leads me to my final point; how do you know what political party you support?
How can I know where I stand on the political spectrum?
This is something that few people just discover in one day, as life continues different experiences and occurrences may shape where you stand politically. You may see on the news about the banning of abortion in Poland and this may help you in determining where you stand on that issue. There are also lots of quizzes out there that may give you an idea, or even just provide some questions for you to consider. The most well-known political quiz can be found here: https://www.politicalcompass.org/test and gives the answer in a 4 by 4 quadrant, which means that you may have Right-Wing views on certain topics, such as the Economy, but more Left-Wing view on perhaps Social Values. This quiz however, does use some specific and technical vocabulary, so if you’d like something lighter, https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/quiz/political-typology/ might be better suited. It uses the line scale shown previously and shows what your answer to each question indicates about your political view. Having done this quiz, it is clear that many of the percentages differ from those given in the large blue and red infographic above.
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