How To Construct a Political Ideology - Summary

This last week I've been writing on how to create a political ideology in a constructive manner. The goal was to create a guide which lets one think about the most important questions in politics while not first deciding that one is a conservative, social-democrat, feminist, libertarian, or any other political identity with a certain script to follow.

The essence of the tutorial is to make lists on the most important topics in politics. Here is a summary of all the lists one should make:

1. The most important political goals you want to achieve, without stating what particular means are best appropriate for them (e.g. world peace, prosperity, freedom).
   (Choose That Which is Most Important to You.)
   
2. All societies/political systems.
3. Those beliefs you have which explain most about human behavior and how our societies function.
4. Those beliefs you have which dismisses most political systems as not being best suited to your preferences.
5. Those ideas which, if they were true, would dismiss most political systems.
   (Consider the Most Important Facts.)
   
6. All political strategies.
7. Those beliefs you have which explain most about how we change our behavior.
8. Those beliefs you have which dismisses most political strategies as too costly to reach your goal.
9. Those ideas which, if they were true, would dismiss most political strategies.
   (Change the World in the Most Efficient Manner.)
   
10. All frequently asked questions about your political choice and your answer to them.
11. Thoughts experiments showing that someone might not really want their highest valued political goal.
12. The most important facts which dismiss a particular political choice.
    (Discuss the Most Important Points.)

Every list is necessary to get a complete ideology but 1 to 5 are, by far, the most important ones. Because, by solving these points you are able to tell which type of society is the best.

Besides writing down these lists one should also consider the different benefits and costs of striving towards a political goal. If the best societies one can think of are reached by means which make it harder to reach another good society, it could be that the second (or third) best society is better than the first, if the cost of reaching them are sufficiently low. (Strive Towards the (Second) Best Society.)

I have also written a little bit about alliances (A Digression on Alliances) and what I mean by politics (The Domain of Politics).

In the next post I'll show my own political perspective, which is only partially complete, using this framework.