Institute for Cultural Evolution
Focusing on the Cultural Roots of America's Challenges
Political Polarization Test Results
Socially Conservative Traditionalist
Your value priorities point to this political position, described below:
Socially Conservative Traditionalist, you tend to highly value loyalty to country and faith, laws that protect heritage and traditions, a strong military, and a culture of “equity” in America where rewards are proportional to effort and talent.
Depolarize Your Thinking, Please Consider the Following Questions:
- How can we integrate the values of patriotism and piety with the value of being critical and dissatisfied with the status quo?
- What is the downside of excluding or negatively judging those who are different from us and do not hold our values?
- Despite the upside, what is the downside of America having the world’s largest military by far?
- How can we integrate the value of equity (a society that rewards our most productive) with the value of equality (a society that provides for the needy)?
Suggested Exercises to Help Depolarize Your Thinking:
About the Four Major Political Positions:
Most knowledgeable commentators agree that the simple bipolar continuum of Left and Right no longer adequately captures the complexity of America’s political milieu. The existential polarity of “liberal and conservative” expresses itself in multiple ways and on multiple levels within the overall electorate. Our model accordingly identifies the four distinct political positions that comprise America’s contemporary political landscape. For more on the philosophy behind the test see: Depolarizing the American Mind: How America Can Grow Beyond Its Currently Polarized Politics, by ICE partners Steve McIntosh and Carter Phipps.
Click on a title to see the results page for each of the four basic political positions:
- Progressive Postmodernist
- Liberal Modernist
- Fiscally Conservative Modernist
- Socially Conservative Traditionalist
About the Test
The political philosophy that informs the polarization test is described in the accompanying white paper on this website: Depolarizing the American Mind: How America Can Grow Beyond Its Currently Polarized Politics, by ICE partners Steve McIntosh and Carter Phipps. As discussed in the paper, a central principle for working with a polarized cultural situation is that each pole needs the values of its opposing pole for its own further and fuller development. Applied to politics, this principle shows how conservative values can serve to improve liberal positions by challenging and moderating such positions in a way that makes them stronger. The same can be said about the role of liberal values in strengthening conservative positions. See the results pages for specific examples. This test is not social science research, it is simply an interactive method for demonstrating some of the ideas behind ICE’s polarization campaign. For a fuller description of our proposal, please see the accompanying white paper “Depolarizing the American Mind.”
Polarization Test © 2020, Institute for Cultural Evolution
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