What Is the Spherical Model

We’re approaching an anniversary here at the Spherical Model. While the website has been up somewhat longer, the blog began March 4,2011, which is Monday. That first post was a Friday, so I think I’ll start the celebration today.

The Spherical Model is a way of looking at ideas and how they interrelate. It begins as an alternative to the left/right paradigm of politics, because that view is inadequate. Using a three-dimensional model allows for a full range of ideas, along with an understanding of how they compare to each other and whether they lead to freedom or tyranny. In addition, the model shows similar three-dimensional positions for economic and social ideas. These aren’t three separate models; they are three layers of the same model.

For the full explanation, I hope you’ll read the website. A year ago, at the one-year anniversary, I offered a shorter version, to get you started with the basics.

The Spherical Model idea is my own. It began in 2004, during our homeschooling decade, when I was looking for a way to explain the political spectrum during our history lessons, including a pretty long unit on the Constitution and government. I expanded the spherical idea beyond politics to include economic and social ideas sometime later and started writing those segments in 2008. I got the website up in 2010, when we finally graduated Social Sphere from our homeschool.  

I consider Spherical Model to be a think tank, but as think tanks go this is about as small as one can get. It consists of me and my personal research and opinions, along with input from my grown children, who happen to have personalities and interests that coincide with the three portions of the model: Political Sphere, Economic Sphere, and Social Sphere. The oldest, Political Sphere, who is a law student now, tends to offer the most input, which I appreciate. A time or two he has written a guest post. Economic Sphere has a degree in economics, and when I had more access to him daily, I often had him school me in how to explain economic principles. He’s now in the Army, studying at the Defense Language Institute. My daughter, Social Sphere, got married this past year, and is studying Family Consumer Science, which fits well into what we cover in the ingredients needed for civilization. Mr. Spherical Model, my husband of 31 years, also offers occasional general input.

For this anniversary review, I’d like to do a series on the three overlaying spheres. The goal, in all three spheres, is to follow the principles that will lead us to and help us remain in the northern hemisphere—the further north the better. So we’ll cover the principles over the next few days.

Political Sphere

The northern hemisphere is freedom; the southern hemisphere is tyranny. The longitudinal lines relate to the perspective—who has the interest. The western hemisphere is most local/individual, and moving toward the eastern hemisphere is moving toward larger interests, with national, regional, and global interests. In the south the two quadrants divide, then, into chaos tyranny in the southwest and statist tyranny in the southeast—both bad, and both the most common versions of governance throughout history. Too many people see the whole political struggle as consisting of the opposition between chaos and control; power seekers often use chaos as an opportunity to gain power by offering relief from the chaos.

These people are blind to the entire northern hemisphere, where people are more peaceful, more productive, more thriving. America, as created in the US Constitution, is probably the best example we have of northern hemisphere freedom at the national level, possibly in all of world history.

What are the principles that get us to the northern freedom zone? The following questions let us know whether the principles are being met.

• Is the policy being debated something that an individual has the right to do, and therefore has the right to delegate to his/her government? For example, a person has the right to protect his own life and property. He can, therefore, combine resources with his neighbors and hire a government entity, such as a sheriff, to do that job for him. Similarly, the several states can combine to delegate the power of defending the nation to a national government entity. Conversely, a person does not have the right to take his neighbor’s excess grain production, for example, and bestow it on himself, because his neighbor was more prosperous in a particular season. He can, of course, ask his neighbor for charity, but he cannot coerce the neighbor to give. That would rightfully be considered theft. Therefore the person cannot delegate the redistribution of wealth to the government to do for him without moving too far south on the sphere.
• Does the policy infringe in any way on the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights? Does the policy infringe on the free exercise of religion or try to establish a particular sect as a state religion? Is political speech hindered? Does the policy infringe on the right of citizens to bear arms? Does the policy constitute an illegal search or seizure? Does the policy deprive a person of life, liberty, or property when the person has not committed a crime for which that deprivation is the just sentence? Does the policy try to claim for government a power that was not specifically granted in the Constitution? etc. If the policy infringes on the God-given rights, then government cannot take that power without usurping power from the people and is too far south on the sphere.
• Is the idea being debated a proper role of government, some aspect of protection (including national defense, protection from interstate crime, enabling international and interstate commerce, standardized weights and measures and currency to protect the value of wealth, the judiciary that guarantees the protective laws), as enumerated in the Constitution? If not, then accepting the idea is outside the Constitution and is too far south on the sphere.
• Is the perspective appropriately local? It is important that any issue be handled at the most local level possible. Parents should decide the means, methods, and curriculum for educating their children, for example. An issue that affects a state should be handled at the state level, not the national level. National decisions should not be ceded to some international body. As listed in the above question, some interests are national, but ceding power to a larger entity than the actual interest leads to tyranny, which means too far south on the sphere.