Profiles, Dimensions, and Axes: A Reader's Guide

How to read a profile

Every entity in EthosGraph, whether an ideology, a religion, a government, an institution, a document, or a figure, is described across the same 22 dimensions. Each dimension names one orientation: something an entity can lean toward, lean against, or hold at the center.

The dimensions come in two kinds, and the difference is the organizing idea of the whole instrument.

Values are the ends an entity treats as worth pursuing: what it wants the world to be like. Care, liberty, tradition, and knowledge are values in this sense. There are fourteen.

Principles are the commitments an entity keeps while pursuing its ends: the rules it binds itself to along the way. Restraint, consistency, honesty, and accountability are principles in this sense. There are eight.

Holding these apart lets one profile show both what an entity is reaching for and how it is willing to reach for it. An entity can hold ambitious ends alongside strong self-restraint, or hold the same ends while treating any means as acceptable, and the profile shows the difference.

Each dimension is read on a scale from strong support to strong opposition:

Core commitment · Strongly supports · Leans toward · (center) · Leans against · Strongly opposes · Core opposition

A center reading is labeled by what it actually is: Balanced where the entity genuinely holds both sides, Indifferent where it engages the question but gives it little weight. And where a dimension simply doesn't speak to an entity, because the question has no meaning for it or the entity is silent on it, the cell reads Not scored, with the reason shown. An absence is never dressed up as a neutral stance.

One rule governs every word on this page: the dimensions describe where an entity points. None of them says where anyone should point. Opposition to a dimension is a stance, not a defect, and the instrument records it the same way it records support.

Dimension Overview

These dimensions were chosen because each names an orientation that is recognizable across different cultures, ideologies, and eras, not because any of them is admirable. A dimension earns its place by being meaningful everywhere the instrument looks, and the profile's job ends at showing where an entity points. Where you should point is yours.

The Values

The ends an entity pursues. Grouped here for orientation only; each is scored on its own.

Care, fairness, and merit

Care & Welfare. Does the entity treat other people's wellbeing as something to actively pursue? A strong commitment here means others' flourishing organizes what the entity does; strong opposition means it treats suffering or deprivation as acceptable. This is about doing for people. Simply refraining from harm is a separate commitment (Restraint), and wanting people to be equal is a separate value (Equality). Care asks whether people are made well, not whether they are made equal.

Equality. How far does the entity press the claim that people are owed equal treatment? The strong end ranges from affirming everyone's equal worth up to actively working to level outcomes; the opposing end treats ranked human worth as natural or even foundational. Equality is deliberately kept separate from rewarding merit (Achievement): an entity can prize both, or trade one against the other, and keeping them apart is what lets that trade-off be seen.

Achievement & Excellence. Does the entity prize accomplishment, competence, and earned distinction? A strong commitment treats merit as something that should be rewarded, even structuring the social order around it; opposition distrusts or suppresses striving and standing out. Accepting inequality that is earned belongs here, not under Equality. The two are different questions.

The individual, the group, and authority

Liberty. How much does the entity want a world where individuals choose for themselves? The strong end treats personal freedom as a founding aim; the opposing end treats suppressing self-direction as proper. Liberty is the goal of freedom. The operating rule against forcing people is a separate principle (Consent), so an entity can praise freedom while compelling in practice, and the profile shows both.

Community & Solidarity. Does the entity value the group itself: belonging, shared identity, mutual obligation? A strong commitment builds and elevates the collective bond; opposition dismisses group obligation in favor of the individual. This is about the cohesion of the group as a unit, distinct from caring for the individual people inside it (Care) and from deferring to whoever holds power (Authority). Valuing freedom and valuing community are independent, and an entity can hold both.

Authority & Hierarchy. Does the entity treat concentrated power, and the deference owed to it, as the right way to order things? A strong commitment holds that rank is proper and obedience is owed; opposition rejects concentrated authority as a way of organizing life. This is what separates a hierarchical order from an egalitarian collective that might otherwise look similar. It is not the same as revering the past (Tradition), and it says nothing about whether that power is bound by rules (Rule of Law).

Continuity and change

Tradition & Continuity. Does the entity treat the inherited past as carrying authority, with customs and forms worth preserving because they are inherited? Strong commitment treats continuity as foundational; strong opposition seeks rupture from the past, even a fresh start at "year zero." The test for whether something belongs here rather than under Sanctity: would it still matter if it were newly invented?

Progress & Innovation. Does the entity treat change, improvement, and the new as good in themselves? A strong commitment actively drives transformation; opposition defends the status quo, up to treating the prevention of change as a founding aim. Progress and Tradition are independent, not opposites. An entity can prize both reform and heritage, or neither, and the instrument scores each on its own evidence.

Safety and the long horizon

Security & Stability. How far does the entity organize itself around safety, order, and protection from threat? A strong commitment makes threat-prevention a founding aim; opposition tolerates disorder, or treats upheaval itself as desirable. Security looks toward danger; Tradition looks toward the past. Preserving the old order and seeking safety are different orientations, even when one entity does both.

Nature & Intergenerational Stewardship. Does the entity weigh the welfare of the natural world and of people not yet born? This extends moral concern beyond the people alive today. It is distinguished from Care by who benefits: Care weighs living persons; Stewardship weighs nature and future generations.

Meaning, knowledge, and expression

Sanctity & Transcendence. Does the entity organize itself around the sacred, or a source of meaning beyond the material? A strong commitment makes the transcendent the frame for everything else; strong opposition actively works to eliminate the sacred. A secular entity that simply says nothing about the sacred is not scored as opposing it. Silence is an absence, and the profile records it as such.

Knowledge & Truth. Does the entity treat understanding and truth as worth pursuing for their own sake? A strong commitment makes inquiry a founding aim; opposition devalues or suppresses it. This is the valuing of knowing as an end. How the entity reasons (Evidence-Based Reasoning) and whether it tells the truth to others (Transparency & Honesty) are separate principles. An entity can prize knowledge and still guard it, or reason well about things it never discloses.

Material Aspiration. How far does the entity treat acquiring and having material goods as a measure of worth, success, and identity? At the strong end, possession sits near the center of how standing is judged; at the opposing end, renouncing material want is itself a first principle. This is independent of the sacred: an entity can tie status to wealth while being devout, or give up possessions for spiritual reasons that register under Sanctity rather than here.

Beauty & Expression. Does the entity treat beauty, aesthetic experience, and creative expression as ends worth pursuing in themselves? A strong commitment holds the aesthetic as intrinsically worthwhile, apart from skill, novelty, holiness, or belonging; opposition treats aesthetic expression as illegitimate. A tradition can prize beauty without prizing any of those neighbors, which is exactly what marks this as its own orientation.

The Principles

The operating commitments that govern how an entity pursues its ends.

Avoiding harm and respecting agency

Non-Maleficence (Restraint). Does the entity bind itself to avoid harm and limit its own power, even when harm is available and useful? A strong commitment forgoes power it could use; the opposing end treats unrestrained use of harmful power as acceptable. Restraint is the discipline of refraining, held apart from actively doing good (Care) and from not forcing people (Consent). An entity can harm without coercing, and coerce without harming.

Consent & Anti-Coercion. In its dealings with people, does the entity get its way through agreement and persuasion rather than compulsion? This is the operating counterpart to Liberty: an entity may place little value on freedom as an end yet still bind itself not to coerce, or hold freedom dear while compelling in practice. The profile records what the entity actually binds itself to.

Fair, answerable, inclusive process

Rule of Law & Consistency. Does the entity apply rules consistently and impartially, including to itself, with the rules set out in advance? A strong commitment accepts no exemptions, even against its own power; the opposing end treats rules as tools bent to will, ruling by decree. Consistency set beforehand is this principle; answering for mistakes afterward is the next one.

Accountability. Is the entity answerable and correctable when it is wrong? A strong commitment builds mechanisms of responsibility and submits to them; the opposing end treats itself as unanswerable on principle. Accountability is the mechanism of consequence and correction. Disclosing information (Transparency) enables accountability, but it is not the same thing. Openness without consequence is still openness only.

Inclusiveness & Pluralism. As a matter of process, does the entity include diverse voices and tolerate dissent? A strong commitment builds inclusion and the protection of disagreement into how it operates; the opposing end works to homogenize or eliminate dissent. This is about who is admitted to the process, distinct from believing people have equal worth (Equality) and from not compelling anyone (Consent). Including voices is not the same as not forcing them.

Assigned Groups. On what basis does the entity allocate roles, standing, and authority: by unchosen group membership (sex, caste, lineage, ethnicity), or by open access regardless of birth-group? This records the rule of allocation, not the worth of persons or the value of merit, both of which are separate. An entity may affirm everyone's equal worth while still gating roles by birth-group, and that combination is exactly what this dimension exists to register. Its poles are descriptive. Allocation by birth-group is recorded, not coded as a defect, in keeping with the instrument's rule of describing rather than ranking.

Honest and evidence-grounded

Transparency & Honesty. Does the entity bind itself to communicate openly and truthfully, even when that is costly? Its floor is the absence of deception and its reach is proactive openness, so an entity that never lies but discloses little sits at the low-positive end, not the negative. Opposition here means active deception: withholding, spinning, or treating propaganda as an instrument of operation.

Evidence-Based Reasoning. Does the entity form and revise its beliefs from evidence, or insulate them from anything that could prove them wrong? A strong commitment grounds beliefs in evidence and updates them when the evidence changes; the opposing end holds doctrine immune to evidence on principle. This is the inward discipline of reasoning, distinct from outward honesty (an honest communicator can reason dogmatically) and from valuing truth as an end. Treating how an entity reasons as an orientation to be described, rather than an obligation assumed, is one of the instrument's more distinctive choices.