Sharing a quadrant with Gandhi. And thus ends the comparison.

Rob and I have just started attending a weekly class called “Christianity and Islam.” As currently a member of neither group, I’m actually very excited about the class. I was concerned that there would be a bias or a slant to the class and so far, well, there sort of is but I am encouraged by the openness of the bias.

The class is being held among a group of Christians. Right there I was a bit wary since I’m still trying to get my head around that concept. I was beyond delighted in the first class, however, that when comments were made about the Quaran occasionally being somewhat narrow in focus, fellow students were quick to point out similar narrow-sightedness in the Bible. This gives me tremendous hope that I will actually learn something here and will be able to draw my own conclusions without the “benefit” of a group-think mentality.

But I digress.

The comment that really got me thinking and prompted this entry was one made by the instructor. After acknowledging his own personal bias towards conservatism and Christianity, the discussion leader asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if in the media, there was a little rating system or code or something that told you where the writer or broadcaster stood on things? So that you would know their bias and the context that they were speaking in?” This actually is a pretty cool idea. As much as journalists strain and contort and exclaim they are unbiased, I find it hard believe they can truly prevent their own opinions from influencing their work.

When I was working in opinion research in the San Francisco Bay Area, I concluded early on that it was essential that I “go beyond the hills” several times per year just to remind myself that the Bay Area was its own reality and that the rest of the world was quite different. Mind you, I loved the world I was in there, but I realized it was very different than the rest of the planet, even just 100 miles away. My job was to interpret public opinion. I felt it was my duty to regularly remind myself of my filters so that I could hopefully avoid any slant in my work-based, presumably unbiased conclusions. But I’m sure I slanted despite my efforts.

I bring all this up because I thought readers who happen by this little blog might want to know the agenda, bias, filters, slant, etc. of the ramblings that appear here. If asked, I’d tell you I’m a chunk more liberal than my rural little town but a hunk more conservative than my college self. Since that may not really tell you much, Rob was kind enough to offer this website: Political Compass. I took the five minute quiz and my results are below. Gotta love a graph!! Comfortingly, the results are exactly as I expected. I’m just a touch left of center. Which is a whole lot different than not being right.