h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Darakat Rant #15
EXPLANATION OF POLITICAL WORDAGE
(an completely bias view presented by your friends at darakat co)

PROLOGUE:
Well you knew I was building up to it. We have had in recent times a rant on death, factions in parties, halloween, and phonological constants which we found weren't quite as all constant as all that. But today we have something altogether different from these abject, overrated and under-toned and unimportant items. You see today we are going to talk about something that matters much more than anything else in the entire world. What could that possibly be?

The environment? You would think that this would be it, me being a self confessed pod leftist geek green that the environment is the most important thing in the entire universe to me right? Well your right, but thats what important to ME, not everybody thinks that trees, animals, fungi and little rivers called brook are really that important. If they did the place wouldn't be in the situation its in right? Well actually no. There is actually another dark figure lurking in our damp old minds that is far far more important and deciding factor in all of the things that life has had as a deciding factor for the last 10 thousand or so years. Its called politics.

INTRODUCTION:
In the dark ages near the beginning of the point at which most people decided to call time, time or the language variant of. There was this grouping of people in these wondrous things called towns. Where you could be much safer than you used to be, and you could afford to specialize in things like woodcraft, farming, boat building or brewing a mean ale, and so on. But this grouping of people meant that some other things started happening. People argued, over a lot of things, to start with simple things, like when the corn was ready for harvesting, or who's house should go where. We are of course social beings and eventually someone somewhere figured out that hitting each other with rocks, sticks, and fish, was no longer sufficient to settle the arguments that these things called towns had helped produced. Obviously there had to be a reasonable way of getting all of these things well and truly sorted out.
Suddenly someone did, it was called politics.

POLITICS - The applied science of Philosophy.
Now philosophy may not seem to be in any way related to whether or not your fence should be 1.2 meters high or if the price of fish should be $1.87 kg or $1.88 kg. But this is because you don't think of the big picture. You see deciding who and who should not have fish is as much a philosophical decision as a economical one. This is where we get into the very first part of politics, however we do come in the back door. We can now come aware of the first two factions, or splits in the overall scheme of decision making. This is the Left wing and Right wing split.

Left:
Generally for change
For a more controlled economy
Generally for the workers, lower class and "the people".

Right:
Generally against change
For a more deregulated economy
Generally for the Lawyers, Upper class and "the market".

Now this split is not really a sufficient describer of most politicians today, but since this is a introduction into the hole thing I will leave more complicated things out. These two side are the two things that one should always be aware of when going to a polling booth. The left wing will try and tell you there for the worker, the people and occasionally the society, the right wing will tell you that they are for the businessman, for the economy and are also occasionally for the society. But how does this actually help us explain things? Well lets get a little explanation of right and left wing before we move on, because remember what they tell you is not necessarily the case. You see in the hart of all things is the for change or against change argument. The right wing tends to be against it, but this is not necessarily the case, there ideals about the economy can easily be put first, the same goes for the left wing, you can quite easily have a left wing person who is against all change whatsoever, but is against a deregulated economy. So what is this dam left wing right wing thing?
Well its not simple to explain, but it lies at its hart in the applied science of philosophy which is what politics is. Basically the idea is that someone who wants to change things is a person who is on the left side of a argument, not that they are left wing on all things, just for this idea, also this goes for the person who does not wish to change things in a particular argument. The idea of this being that eventually both side will come into equilibrium so that both sides agree. However the problem is that the outside world changes for them, and suddenly a whole new thing has to be argued about, once again one person will want to change things and the other would want to not change things. The best way to explain how this happens is a little story about a town.

A small town in the hills had a long winding road over a cliffside that was peril if you fell off. One day a bus load of tourists crashed down the cliff side, all 12 died.
The town held a meeting to decide on what to do about the cliffside that was near there obscure hamlet. The following conclusions could be reached:

1. The town could build a grate and blockage system to stop people from going off the cliff.
2. The town could build a hospital and or better emergency services for the next crash.
3. The town could do nothing and pretend the crash never happened.
4. The town could build a tunnel under the mountain thus giving extra access as well as solving this hole cliff problem for good.
5. We can charge people to go over the road, and force only those who really need to use the road, thus reducing casualties.

Now all of these are relatively simple and understandable conclusions to be reached by someone thinking about this dam cliffside problem, but what answer is best?:

The first answer is the very sensible answer and is the least expensive. It requires little planning and is all round the best option. If you think it is. The problem with the solution is that it doesn't say what sort of blockage system, weather or not its on just that part of the cliff or not and weather or not the system will be vigorously tested. Suddenly there are hole al the way through. This is a leftist solution but by the merest of smidgens.

The second answer is just plain silly, or appears to be. Its not actually a bad option when you think about it. As long as the hospital serves other objectives and forces and just isn't solely built for the small purpose of the crash its fine. It might be a left wing option, as it not only serves "the people" but creates jobs and allows more control over the economy. However it can also be seen as a right wing option as doctors and medical people are apparently highly paid or are according to some people who don't work 24 hour shits .

Well 3 is a pretty useless answer, and doesn't really solve the problem. But is an example of a conservative political view point This does not mean that this is a view held by the right wing. Conservatives exist in all known political parities and you can quite easily be conservative on one thing Such as say chocolate and liberal As in a lot of chocolate, not liberal the political party on others . It could also be a liberalist view point but it is certainly a conservative view point.

The fourth option is very expensive, but it addresses the problem with as much brut force and general carefulness as a blunt instrument. Its a fast option that would be played on the table by someone who wanted the problem shot square in the head and get on with the other problems that may need to be addressed such as their upcoming re-eection. This is an example of an slightly authoritarian approach because it deals with the problem way to fast.

The fifth option is the most extreme option in our list it would seem but it might not be if you hold this view point it could actually be the best option if there are better ways into the town and people only use the road for a shortcut it could actually be a very good opinion. The road is probably very expensive to maintain (erosion and so on), all this considered one can quite easily come to this opinion. Although theoretically it is a authoritative response.

Ok now explain all of this to me?:
Of course, how can one be conservative and liberalist at the same time? Why isn't the last option right wing? how can the second option be both left an right? What does authoritative and liberal have to do with anything? these are all questions one should ask about this "mock case study".
First of all we need to review our "wings":

Left Wing: (examples: Unionism, Communist, Socialist)
Generally for change
For a more regulated economy
For the workers, poor, or the "people"

Right Wing: (examples: Neo-conservatism, Capitalists)
Genrally against change
For a less regulated economy
For the rich and "the market"

Liberalist: (examples: Anarchy, Social Reactionary)
For more freedom in society

Authoritarian: (examples: Feudalism, Fascism)
For more control in society

Now these two new parts of the political spectrum seem a little weird at first. One may say "how can a left wing person be liberalist if he is for a more regulated economy, that means he is for control?" or "how can a right wing person be authoritarian since he is for a less regulated economy and that means he is for freedom". This is of course a valid argument. One can easily concentrate that all left wing people must be at least slightly authoritarian and right wing people must all be a bit liberalist. However we look at our examples to try and destroy this myth. For a start these two new area are not ones of economic representation, but of social views. In this case one can quite easily place political parties and famous political people on our new 4 way wing system (by the way this is political compasses idea not mine, but I will take it further than they do). The nazi party (to take no particular example) is not longer on this scale completely and utterly the most right wing you can get, in fact the party was only just right wing, it was however very deeply authoritative. Ghandi on the other had is a leftist libertarian.

CONCLUSION:
So in conclusion we have resolved that politics is the applied science or philosophy and that it can be spit into as many simple (or complicated) dichotomies as you like. It is the ability of our satinet minds to comprehend every possible answer and then decide on which one we think is right and true, or the one we like. Its also possible to e completely central in all your views and be a complete fence sitter, unfortunately any politician who has that stance has the life span of the average door mouse as he or she would be brought down by lack of well any policy to speak of, but its okay for a normal person to hold that view apparently. Anyway I should really bring this to a close somehow, so I just like to say that whenever i listen to Wagner i feel like invading poland.

REFERENCES:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/

The first step to any decent war is to invade Poland. If Poland wanted to start a war would it have to invade itself then?

Hmmm... at least in Norway. Liberalists are not neccesarily for freedom, they're for negative freedom, which means freedom from laws and regulation, but not real freedom, since society has other ways of limiting an individual...

A good rant, but I disagree on certain points...

I have waited a long time for a lovely rant such as this. I, too, disagree on certain point, but it was very nice.

It was. As far as pure ranting goes, I'd give it about a 9.5 out of 10, just leaving a little room in case next week's rant ends up being the pinnacle of rantdom.

I agree.

Month. I do one a month.

More, more, more! *the crowd roars*

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/5520868/

yes, yes, ive gotten that one.