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The Worldview: An Old Concept and a New Idea

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.                                           

In my effort to define and to illuminate the concept of the worldview which is fascinating to me, I am in the bind, facing a paradox.

The concept of the worldview, in this or that form, for millennia, was the domain of philosophers.

From the Vedas, Lao-Tze and Plato to Vidal and Merinoff, all of them were talking about Big Questions.  Funny thing (hint, hint) that they talked much more about the questions than the answers….The other funny thing about these questions is that the more these philosophers divide, categorise and put them in separate domains – like ontology, axiology, praxeology etc, the more they stay the same.   So, Immanuel Kant was apparently the first to use the term Weltanschauung, but in the more perceptual sense, Adler wrote in late 20th century huge treatise summarising our concepts of the worldview, but the best information about worldview I found in Clement Vidal’s brilliant and funny paper “Metaphilosophical Criteria for Worldview Comparison” 2008.

Kenneth Funk from the Oregon State University wrote a nice essay about the worldview and he quoted a good set of definitions including his own. He discussed following  aspects of the worldview:

  • epistemology: beliefs about the nature and sources of knowledge;
  • metaphysics: beliefs about the ultimate nature of Reality;
  • cosmology: beliefs about the origins and nature of the universe, life, and especially Man;
  • teleology: beliefs about the meaning and purpose of the universe, its inanimate elements, and its inhabitants;
  • theology: beliefs about the existence and nature of God;
  • anthropology: beliefs about the nature and purpose of Man in general and, oneself in particular;
  • axiology: beliefs about the nature of value, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong.

 

This booklet is not for the philosophers (even, as I know some of them, they could benefit greatly!), it is for the modern, 21st century curious, educated persons. So, the worldview we want to talk about is somehow different than the thing in the philosophical books. It is much more practical, personal and useful. I want to demystify the worldview, I want to take it out from the hands of philosophers, out of academia, out of the doctrine, no matter which authority it may follow.

It is why the plan for this chapter has changed. After all books, all research, I think, that philosophical history of the concept is unnecessary for the creating of the personal worldview. You do not need PhD in psychology, political science and (often) criminal justice to vote. You did not read Sun Tzu’s Art of war before you were sent off to Vietnam and the problems of entropy shouldn’t bother you at the gas station. Similarly, a modern human needs to be aware of his or her worldview without being  a professional philosopher. On the other hand, the more we explore the everyday life the deeper it leads us.

 

The worldview we are going to work on is the set of rules and values you live your life by. Your human nature and your life experiences, including possibly spiritual ones, made you who you are. Now, the processes and forces that are responsible for creating you, the human being, are controversial and are the part of your worldview. But everybody has one and uses it all the time to make every decision, every move. Most of this system are automatic, subconscious – always or almost always. I get up in the morning and go to work, I am a pediatrician, and there is always the tapestry of mechanical routines, joy and pain, worry and searching for solutions. Big Questions are not there but are floating further or closer, or out of sight, for a moment.

So, this is it. This is the hard act to do- we need to shift and shift and shift- from the abstract, primordial dilemmas of humanity to the simplest, warmest human pain and joy.

 

   In the books, the criteria for the worldview evaluation was very simple: the truth. If it is true it is my worldview, if it is mine worldview it must be true! The problem is that if you look at the big questions, again and again, the only answer you can truthfully give is “ I do not know” or “I am not sure” Well, let’s close the shop and go home. But we can’t. We need to live the rest of our life and live it well. Also, we can see that we have lived the first part of our lives as if we would have known the answers. So now there is an obvious task: to tease out them from the life we lived, fine tune them, make them more clear and coherent and live the rest of the life more “examined” as Socrates would put it.

   

   We do not know these answers, but still we would like to believe in the true values and principles, rather than in false. We’d like to be working on the answers which feel true to us, trying to build a coherent worldview. So, at the end of the chapter about the concept of the worldview I am going to leave you with that: there are no true answers, nobody knows true answers, the smartest people’s definitions did not help us the slightest. If your answer is a piece of a story, a metaphor or even a joke and if it resonates with you as your own, you are a million miles ahead, stronger, with more integrity and resilience.

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Explicit and implicit worldview, The Worldview Internet Game, Worldview Owner's Manual

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Three Worldviews and You.

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.                                           

Everybody has a worldview, this is old hat. Philozophy.com users uniquely know that everybody has actually, at least, three.

One sits in the guts, mysterious and unconscious one, showing only sometimes who you really are. You live your life and by your decisions and actions, you declare and stamp out your worldview on the world you interact with. Second is your wishful thinking, how you’d like to be- strong, wise, happy and benevolent.

The third is what you put out for the show, the mixture of the principles you’re trying to live by, of worries, hypocrisy, defiance, and bravado.When you’re growing up, it is what you work on, try to know it, understand it, maybe even modify? It is what you are challenged with when you try to write it down…The relationship between these three reflects your progress in maturation and the level of freedom with which you live your life.

The manual might help you to explore these three worldviews of yours, so you will be able to juggle them, be aware of them and use them in life to your best advantage.

Some people go to the Philozophy.com and work happily on the Big Questions without any help. Others would enjoy Owner’s Manual to explore their personal worldview deeper and better. Nobody reads all manual, people are usually curious about a special aspect of the thing. It is why some parts are repetitive… 

The manual will grow out of my blog. I have been studied the concept of the worldview and have been writing essays about it for 5 years now. My explorations took a new twist and was boosted by my daughter Sophia’st development of  the site Philozophy.com. Moving beyond the idleness of the philosophical musings we gradually were able to work in the “laboratory” of the real people’s worldviews.

We believe, and I will explain this belief later, that participating in our project makes the person happier, smarter and it makes the World a better place.

The major reason that I am going to build this Manual from my blog is that I am counting on your help. In my blog, you’ll find the posts related to all planned chapters – fourteen of them. Some are almost done , some- almost empty. Please comment and discuss the work in progress.

This attitude of transparency and the hope for teaming with you is not accidental.

It reflects the core character of the project itself. In its aspect of the social experiment, it tests the social maturity of the participants, including me- trusting in the goodness of the human nature, in living in the free community without fears or shame, where you are responsible for your life and play and where your life and play matters.

Obviously, your help with the manual is as part of your life as is a reflection of your worldview.

Both Manual and the Philozophy.com are completely ideology-neutral. This is the place where different worldviews mingle, all are welcome, their only defense consists of the human values and benefits for humanity. But we have preferences; we are for individualism, for cooperation and for the freedom of expression. We are against mob mentality, mindlessness, and stupidity. We are against the fear of being yourself, against the fear of exploring and against the fear of individual thinking.

Let’s do it and let The Force be with us, which is very likely, otherwise with whom it would be, like, with Klingons?

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Uncategorized, Worldview Owner's Manual