History-Explorer

After several months of being off DeviantArt after deciding then to retire I've been working on what I need to do in life and have some time I can spend here, however it will be less time than spent before. I may still decide to go back to discontinuing using DA or will have long periods of time where I will be inactive.

The left-right political spectrum that originated in France that described those supporting the monarchy, the Catholic Church, aristocracy along with the hierarchy of the social order in France on the right as opposed to those on the left supporting a republic, secular division of religion and state, promoting legal equality of French citizens and dismantling the aristocracy; and then centrists having attitudes between these. Since then groups have been associated with left, right, or centre, since then. However many do not understand what the left-right spectrum even is, with versions of it created to depict all the favourable characteristics they want on their section of the spectrum and all unfavourable characteristics with another part of the spectrum. Two political movements that self-identified as left-wing and right-wing emulated and copied each other - that is communism in the Soviet Union under Stalin and fascism in Italy under Mussolini and Germany under Hitler even though communists and fascists in these countries were rivals but commonly practiced totalitarianism led by one political party that sought indoctrination of the populations in the countries they ruled. So left-right division does not mean that there cannot be areas of close similarity.

Some may think that it is simple and that those on the right for instance can be associated simply as conservatives, but then at the end of the Cold War weren't the hardliner communists in the Soviet Union who opposed reforms being put forward by Mikhail Gorbachev from their point of view conservative in conserving the Soviet political system from reforms they saw as counter to its interests? Conservative attitudes on their own have no logical reason to be assumed to be right-wing other than people with conservative attitudes to long-established traditions dating back to the original right-wing in France. However since then there are people who identify as right-wing even though they support a republic and secular division of religion and state in that they do not want a state-administered religion and do not supported aristocracy by birthright, the left-right spectrum as originally conceived in France shows its particular basis in French culture of that time and cannot easily be associated with contemporary politics where the issues of monarchy, a state-administered religion, and aristocracy by birthright are not heated matters in politics as they were at the time of the French Revolution.

Even though I do not treat Wikipedia as a great source its definition of left-wing and right-wing politics as able to be reduced down to an egalitarian-hierarchist divide appears very plausible as that was the inclination in the French political divide in the French Revolution, however while this may be valuable to describe official ideology again the example of the communist states in the Eastern Bloc show an "in practice" reality of very privileged and corrupt elites in the state while ordinary people suffered from serious poverty. However when I use the left-right spectrum I am referring to the egalitarian-hierarchist divide and when referring in general to governments I use the official stance they identified with as this was the basis that they promoted themselves to the people of a society, though I do bear in mind that there has been hypocrisy by governments such as like I said before the Eastern European communist states.

The left-right spectrum has been used far too often as a simplification of politics that in reality involve multiple spectrums as well as a distinction between official positions in politics that can be completely dishonest that rally people to them while disguising the actual positions that are known by insiders. I find that is becoming increasingly stretched too far from what it originally meant to have much semblance to who the original leftists, rightests, and centrists were in late 18th century France. I can see merit to addressing the official and actual positions of egalitarian versus hierarchist divisions in politics but also other spectrums political divisions such as desire for conformity versus openness to nonconformity on attitudes of how people should behave with regards to cultural norms, inclusivity in being open to include new members to a society regardless of background versus exclusivity in being open only to new members to a society who meet standards expected of them to join the society while excluding those who do not meet the standards, individualist versus collectivist - the issue is whether the rights and duties of the individual take precedence over collective rights and duties of a community they a member of. There are other spectrums as well that could be included. Questions specifying specific situations where people have such views are valuable as in some areas people may incline to one side of a spectrum but on another issue they may be inclined to the other side.