Interactive atlas
One line hides what three questions show.
20 traditions, and 60 people who governed or argued for them, on one figure. Collapse it to the familiar left–right line and watch traditions that disagree about almost everything land on the same point — then expand it and watch them come apart.
Start here
Where do you sit?
6 questions, about a minute — then you are a point on the figure below, next to the traditions nearest you.
Every question names the axis it moves before you answer it. Pick a length — they are nested, so you can take a short one now and carry on into a longer one without losing an answer.
Six is the shortest honest set: each axis of the figure needs a statement pointing at each of its poles, or it measures agreeableness as much as opinion.
A third question: whether inherited social forms should be conserved or revised. Depth is the new one. Drag the cube: every flat picture of it is a projection that loses an axis, which is what the first two views were doing to you.
- Economichorizontal
Collective / redistributiveIndividual / market
Who decides how productive assets are allocated, and how much of the product is redistributed after the fact.
You: +0.00
- Authorityvertical
LibertyState power
How much coercive power the state may exercise over individuals, and how few the checks on it are.
You: +0.00
- Identitydepth
ProgressiveTraditional
Whether inherited social forms — family structure, gender roles, religious moral norms, sexual conduct — should be conserved or revised.
You: +0.00
- E
- +0.00
- A
- +0.00
- I
- +0.00
- Nearest (tied)
- Left-populism / Christian democracyd=0.37
All 8 axes
The quiz sets these; so can you, directly. The figure, the radar and the ranking all read from these numbers — there is nothing else behind them. What each axis means.
Profile
Every tradition, by distance
d(u, i) = √( Σ wₐ (uₐ − iₐ)² / Σ wₐ ) over the 8 active axes, all weights equal in Phase 1. This list is the figure’s content in text — it is the accessible path to everything the 3D view shows.
Families
Grouped by intellectual lineage, not by side. Each family has its own shape as well as its own colour, so the map still reads without colour vision. Click any anchor in the figure, or any row in the ranking, to open its dossier.
What this is not
- Not a ranking. No position on this map is scored as better than another.
- Not a measurement. The coordinates are editorial priors written to teach the shape of the space — 4 of the 20 traditions carry an explicit disputed placement, and every axis definition is published.
- Not a personality test. The questions are an on-ramp to the sliders, and the nearest label is a neighbourhood you are standing in, not an identity you have been assigned.