Ecohumanist Lab

This post is going to be published as a part of Worldview Owner’s Manual.  It is posted on my blog to invite you to cooperate in this project.                                           

 At 72 I am looking in the past and suddenly the idea of “the place where different worldviews mingle” seems like a natural consequence of my life-long folly of mixing cultures, domains, disciplines, purposes and other things.

   In the post-war Poland, I was supposed to be a scientist and I studied immunology. In the early sixties, it was a new science with the excitement of philosophical undertones: “what is self?”, “How can organism tell what is and what is not me?” If the organism has a self-sense, can it also have the sense of “not-self” or a world-sense? Can it be a precursor of the worldview? So, I studied more evolution and by and by I become convinced that while the theory of evolution was more or less victorious in academia, the evolutionary thinking in the philosophy, or even more in society had been only paper thin. With the consequences of the evolution in such a broad spectrum of questions, suddenly the concept of the worldview appeared again! “I have a unique worldview”, I thought, and slowly started to formulate and clumsily write it down. The essay “Plato’s cave revisited” came much later, after five years doctoring in Africa and after an attempt to be the scientist in the USA.  Few years later Clement Vidal published “Metaphilosophical Criteria for the Worldview Comparison”. It was brilliant, it was all I wanted, with the excitement of the new millennium and the global brain very soon the idea of “worldview internet game” was born.

     Naively I thought that everybody will immediately like to play- fill the primitive spreadsheet with their answers. Well, everybody liked the idea, even Vidal himself, but nobody wanted to play, even friends and family. And why? Everybody should have love be around the people with the spiritual depth, lightness, sense of humour and broad perspective on humanness and life. One should love to play and interact and soak the open minds, positive attitudes and freedom of expressions. It would be such an antidote against “small talk”, routine “I let you tell your story, you repeated 100 times, then you let me tell my old stuff”. The chance of the real, important conversation, being intimate with somebody without getting to know the problems with his bowel movements… How refreshing it would be to exchange the ideas , the personal values, and practical wisdom without the uneasiness of talking politics or religion!

      To tell you the truth, we still are amazed how awkward and difficult the process  is.

1. It is difficult to come up with short answers, what one wants to be a comprehensive definition or “position”.
2. There is a worry to be too good or too bad, to sincere, or too politically correct, too obvious or too intimate.
3. Often the answers one come up with do not feel genuine or satisfying and making it more personal feels embarrassing or not for publishing.
4. Often the possible answer would  offend “persona” or “ego” or “social status”.

So, the original enthusiasm usually ends up like this:

1. Most often one postpones the hard work, being confronted with the above problems and there are no answers.
2. To be “done” one comes up with “placement answers” like “I’d like to know” or “whatever you feel like” or “will tell you as soon as I find out”
3. Making jokes is good and is usually a step up.
4. Criticizing the questions or the settings is also a good start – “kill the messenger” might start some constructive thinking.

  Undeterred by these painful lessons we are still optimistic and in the next two chapters, I’ll discuss in spite of the above “ why to do it” and “how to do it”  with fun, dignity, and personal benefits. Sophia thinks that the situation will improve with more fun, elegant and interactive site appearance and function while I think that the Manual can alleviate some problems and stimulate the will to create satisfying though always changing a personal worldview. We plan to do both.

If you’re ready to work on your worldview now click here.