Recently we started learning about different ideologies. Since most of us are going to university next year we learned about the ideologies through lectures. This led us to learn about all the different styles of note taking like Standard, Cornell, Mindmap and Memory-key. I chose good ol’ fashioned Standard.  After some time I got the hang of it, here’s my final set of notes!

We learned various different ideologies but the main ones were liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, communism and faschism. On a spectrum they would look like this… 

It’s interesting once you realize that there never has and never will be a defining perspective for each ideology. Everybody has their own definition depending on what perspective they have on life. To one person communism may be absolute insanity, to another it may be what their whole life revolves around. If we are being honest here everybody has biased opinions, the difference is who is aware and who isn’t. When you aren’t aware of your own perspective, opinions or other paradigms is when it starts to cross some dangerous territory. Not understanding you have an ideology can hinder you from learning, growth and can create exclusion. In some cases if a ruler is able to brainwash citizens with an ideology without them realizing, it can create division, violence and isolation (ahem… North Korea).

I’ve noticed that as we go to the far left and right sides the ideologies get more extreme. For example, it’s easy to have some Conservative ideals while also having a few Liberal ideals but it’s hard to be a Fascist and Communist. There isn’t really a right or wrong to ideologies, or a better or worse. It just depends on the situation like who is ruling, how many people, the extremity, etc. However, there are a few ideologies who throughout history have been a little bit more problematic than the rest. Starting with the obvious one, Fascism. As I explained above, Fascism is very authoritarian based. This is already a downfall because as we all know too much power in the wrong hands can be very dangerous. A few examples of this are Adolf Hitler (leader of Nazi Germany) and Benito Mussolini (leader of Italy). They drove the world to a war using their ideologies, and convincing people their way is the only way. This is what I was talking about before, as soon as you stop embracing different ideology things take a turn for the worst.

As I was researching the ideologies I started to think if any of them will last. How do we know if an Ideology will stand the test of time? In my opinion the Ideologies with more flexible/progressive lenses will last. Ideologies like liberalism change with the times, they are open to new ideas and plans. On the flip side, Conservatism loves traditional values and keeping stability in those traditions. This inability to evolve can lead to a downfall in the future. So in my humble opinion I believe that the more progressive Ideologies will last significantly longer.

It’s very interesting to me that anybody is able to look at a piece of artwork, music or literature and be able to immediately tell somebody’s ideology because of the way they frame certain situations. I am trying my best to stay as unbiased as possible while writing this post but i’m sure you could even pick up hints of my lense on life throughout. To express my learning on different ideologies I am going to make you see my perspective on this topic through my lense, math. I see the world in lots of different ways, one of them happens to be numbers, functions and expressions. So here it is, one equation to represent the spectrum of politics.

f(x)= ½(x-0.25)^2-3

To help represent the power of different perspectives on formats I created this picture below. It’s simply a pair of glasses, one side has a standard view on the political spectrum and the other side has my perspective on the spectrum. You can see a little bit of the graphed equation I created peaking through on the right lenses. This helps me express my point of the different powers ideologies and perspectives can hold. You can see something in a completely different form or light depending on your paradigm.

So far I am very intrigued by ideologies and the power they have on us. Saying I learned about different ideologies and the political spectrum would be fair to say. However, my true takeaway is to question everything. Ok not everything, just everything I think. I need to be more aware of thinking about what I’m thinking and why I’m thinking. The reality is we don’t even know what we know, so thinking about what we are thinking can make us more aware of our biased and different perspectives. That whole blurb was probably a mouth full, all I am trying to say is question everything.