Our politicians are failing us. Our media is failing us… And worst of all, we are greatly failing ourselves.

There are things we just don’t talk about in polite society, or rather things that we don’t talk about with people who disagree with us. We tend to have no problem venting our frustrations about our political rivals in the company of presumably like-minded individuals, but often fall silent among the opposition. I believe that we are all guilty of this to varying degrees, but not because we fear confrontation. We just don’t think it will do any good. Democrats are democrats and republicans are republicans. End of story, right?

Well, it might seem that way these days, but the two-party system is far from the oldest or most utilized system in the history of civilization. In fact, the notion of left and right as applied to politics is only as old as the late 18th century in Revolutionary France. Furthermore it is absurd to assign to a black vs. white/ us vs. them model when so many of us, even many who are members of a particular party, consider ourselves independent voters. So the good news is that there really is common ground to be tread upon by both the so-called “Left” and “Right.” The 24-hour news networks and our government officials would have us believe that we are all either as far left or as far right as either direction can stretch and there is virtually no middle anymore. Political pundits have abandoned the mission of discovering truth to pursue the entertainment value that comes from perpetuating a compelling narrative of good vs. evil. The only difference between networks is which side of the aisle gets cast as the Rebel Alliance and which as the evil Galactic Empire. They feed us validations of what we already believe, regardless of factuality.

Of course, real life is not as neat and tidy as Star Wars. The earliest humans created the concept of good and evil to better understand how to achieve safety and a fulfilling life, while also providing a good excuse to go kill the tribe on the other side of the hill, because… you know, “Those guys? They’re not like us… They’re evil.” Below are a series of charts that I created demonstrating the absurdity of the left-to-right-only spectrum by giving examples of where different people’s idealogies land in a more complex and more accurate field. In them you will find no measure of good or evil, only difference of opinion.

This two-axis model is certainly not my invention and has in fact been utilized by political scientists for a very long time. I wanted to create these because a) I wanted to organize my own thoughts on socio-political issues and b) I FREAKING LOVE making charts. From my own observation and conversations with friends and family throughout my life, it appears that a majority of people (at least here in the US) think far too linearly about political and social views. I think now more than ever we need to reject this way of thinking or be doomed to harmful gridlock in our government for a very long time.

Let’s start with world leaders and figureheads.

Grids of this nature that I have seen vary in exactly what qualities they are measuring. Many cross a scale of economic liberalism/conservativism with a scale of social liberalism/conservatism. My spectrum is very similar but focused more on economic and social goals vs. the amount of government control prescribed to achieve them. The x axis is your standard liberal to conservative scale and the y axis measures government interference. This is an important way to demonstrate why it is that Americans so often equate dictators like Stalin and Hitler with one another even though their political parties were considered far left and far right respectively.

I’d like to note that the placement of each individual is based on my own understanding of his political values, and does not represent any official academic research. This should be taken as merely an example of a more sophisticated spectrum.

To really understand the complexity of political leanings, let’s take an example of the dichotomy within a single institution. Christianity is one of the oldest and most widespread idealogies on Earth, and yet there is a massive disconnect between the word of God in the Old Testament and in the New.

This confusion of message has a great effect on the people who on the surface claim to share the same beliefs, especially when mixed with other values. Catholics in the US tend to have traditional conservative values with great reverence for Capitalism even though Jesus’ teachings about rejecting wealth and sharing with the poor are so clearly communistic. This leads us to yet another plane on which we can categorize politics, because both liberals and conservatives can be either very devout or anti-religious. There has already been a lot of friction between the current Pope and his flock, especially here in America.

We’ve been looking at the big picture thus far, but let’s consider thinking in micro. Within our larger global and national societies there are increasingly smaller and smaller groups. Even within the nuclear family, it is impossible to put everyone somewhere on one straight line. As an example I have mapped out the political and religious convictions of my own family based on my understanding of our individual beliefs.

As you can see, there is no defined line in the sand based on gender, but as far as age is concerned my sister and I do stand as a microcosmic sample of the generally more liberal Millennial generation. Our individual convictions guide the way we communicate about social and political issues. My sister and I are aligned on social issues like legal gay marriage and although she is a devout practicing Catholic, she takes no issue with my rejection of faith. The dynamic is very different with my mother who would prefer that I believed in God, but shares to some degree my distaste for the organized Church. As can be seen here, my father and I are on virtually opposite ends of both axes and so we discuss both religion and politics very little.