What Is Your Worldview and How Was It Formed?

This topic was chosen, and written, by Kimberly

In Civilized Conversation we express our beliefs week after week, often citing some facts or figures or personal experiences to back them up.

How else could it really work? Yet, we seldom talk about what lies at the base of our supposedly objective beliefs: our worldviews. At the very least, our unstated POV about how the word works and how it should work leaves us susceptible to seeing facts (or “facts”) from one point of view rather than another. This does not mean that facts don’t matter or that morality or truth are subjective, of course.

Worldviews are where we start from, whether we realize it moment-to-moment or not.

So, I thought a topic that explicitly asks us to speak about and explore our worldviews and their origins would be fun and illuminating. I initially imagined “worldview” both broadly and simply. Someone’s worldview is what they believe about:

• How the world works – especially for “people like me.”
• Why it works this way – God, culture, science, economics, luck, just desserts, etc.
• How the world should work; and
• What the how, why, and should imply for the way we (and other people) should live our lives.

Worldviews are formed in large part during our childhood. They are not coolly reasoned out in Philosophy 101 class ,or by comparing religious doctrines in adulthood, nor by rationally calculating economic interests, or reading child-rearing websites.

• Worldviews are partially socially determined, and thus often highly culture-specific.
• Most people’s worldviews are based on their religious beliefs. A “Christian worldview” seems to be a buzzword among American Christians, at least based on the fact that roughly three-quarters of my Google search results (“What is a worldview?”) were about defining it and celebrating its merits.
• A person’s worldview need not be very explicit or even conscious but serve as automatic decision-making heuristics during times of stress or uncertainty or sudden change.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS –

1. What is a worldview and what are its origins?
2. What is your worldview and how did you come by it?
3. Personal: In general, or for you, what role is played by childhood…

• Parenting and siblings.
  Nurturing, stress, insecurity, or instability.
• Religious faith of the family.

Friends. teachers, romantic experiences, other outsiders.
4. Culture:
How socially- or culturally-determined is a person’s worldview?
Religion’s/churchgoing’s role. Secular worldviews.
Experience of racism, sexism, other discrimination.
5. Western and non-Western worldviews.
6. Change:

• Can your worldview change in adulthood?
• Can a society’s dominant worldview change? How: Economic development, immigration, war/conquest, racial/ethnic conflict or healing, etc.?
• Politics: How can politics change a dominant WV – especially one that holds us back from progress and greater shared prosperity and justice?
• Social media/internet: Do these new tools alter or warp people’s worldviews? How?

OPTIONAL BACKGROUND READINGS –

• RationalWiki’s brief list of the main types of worldviews.
• Nice, but medium-long, breakdown of what comprises a personal worldview. I like this one. It points out your worldview is the framework for how you think, not just how you behave. And it distinguishes “depth” (core well thought-out) in one’s worldview from “breadth” (the practical knowledge it leads to). Both are important. Recommended.
• What is a non-religious worldview, and do Atheism or Agnosticism amount to one?

Note: 1. This is a potluck event.
2. You must have attended at least 1 event to be qualified to attend this event.