I will use politics as my first example. There's more to political views than being liberal or conservative. It's a spectrum: you could me more or less liberal and conservative than others you know, you could be moderate, or just a little more liberal than conservative. There's the first dimension, a one-dimensional spectrum that doesn't require you to be one or the other. Yet that's not enough. On some issues, you may agree with the conservatives, while on others, you may think the liberals are right. In politics, we are faced with social and economic issues, both of which are very different. Thus, we have the two-dimensional view of politics, shown above right. Yet even that's not enough. About the same time I began exploring political views, I started playing a game called NationStates. This game brought me an entirely new view of politics, a three dimensional perspective, shown to the left. This view contains three spectrums: economic, political, and personal freedoms. Even three dimensions isn't enough. A true political spectrum would contain every issue, perhaps several possible spectrums for certain issues. Yet three dimensions is easy for a human mind to understand, and is a great way to view politics.
How about sexuality and gender? The sexuality spectrum, I'm quiet certain, would contain a potential partner's gender, sexuality (I, for example, am very attracted to queer people of any gender), masculinity vs femininity, even a possible fourth dimension of sex. The gender spectrum could contain gender, masculinity vs. femininity (You could be a feminine man or a masculine woman), perhaps physical sex. What other factors would lie on these two spectrums? Where else in life do we need a multi-dimensional perspective?Overall, I'm tired of binaries, and one-dimensional spectrums aren't enough for me, either. Let's change the world.
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