What is a worldview?
A worldview is how any particular person conceives of their reality. Its features include our philosophy of life, perceptions , values , truth , religion, politics , ethics , metaphysics and much more. It is the sum total of our understanding of reality and we use it to come to conclusions about the world and more importantly it dictates how we react to it. We can add to it by experiencing life, contemplating ideas and through communication with others but they don’t become a part of your worldview until you believe in the information you receive. Once you accept something as true it becomes a part of your worldview until you lose faith in that belief.
Why is it important?
This is the most important aspect of our mind in my view because it is the beliefs that we hold as true that tell us how to act. Think of anything that you do beyond satisfying your basic needs and you will see that you only do it because of some belief that you hold about the world. Why do you go to school? So that you can get an education. Why? So that I can get a decent job. Why? so that i can make money. Why? Because money allows me to buy anything that I could want or need.
At each step there is a set of beliefs that you hold that makes it a reasonable thing to do for you. Getting an education requires a great deal of time and effort to gain and you only do it because you believe that it will help you in the future. We seek money only because of the shared belief that it holds some kind of value that can be exchanged for goods and services. We trade years of our lives for money because of this belief.
The point is simple belief dictates our actions in the world. This means that our worldviews are the prime reason for anything that we do so it is incredibly important that we understand it and we can use it. We must seek the truth in the world so that we don’t act upon false beliefs that end up harming ourselves or the ones we love. We must seek the good so that we may know the evils in the world and ourselves so that we may repel them. We must seek to understand the beliefs that make us who we are so they are more in line with who we want to be. If we fail to use it in a good way or we allow others to craft our worldviews for us it means that we are giving away really the only freedom we have. No one can make you do anything, not really. People could threaten abuse torture or otherwise try to coerese you into doing something and no matter what you can always say no. You may die or be brutalized as a result but there is nothing truly forcing you to do anything. However if you allow your worldview to be shaped by others you will find that you will lose your freedom.
By giving your understanding and view to others around you your actions will then be shaped by them and in some cases they can be shaped against your own will. This is why propaganda is really the main way we commit warfare nowadays. That being said, it is still critical that we learn from the people around us and we are capable of finding the truth. There is a fine line between learning from others and blindly accepting their worldview. This is why critically examining the beliefs of those in your mental space is crucial to developing a worldview with as few flaws as is possible.
There are 6 meta beliefs that I hold when developing my worldview Openness Adaptability Becoming Nuance Balance and Synergy
Openness
This is the aspect of being open to all ideas. This is a huge boon when it comes to finding truth or what is good. We are limited creatures and even with our global civilization we are still trying to figure out what is up with the world around us and our own nature. There are bound to be mistakes in thought and failed experiments that are passed off as truth and it seems to me that on most things a lot of the time people are probably wrong or at least not seeing the full picture of the world. I know from my own experience of examining my beliefs that most of them sucked, a lot of them still probably suck and will continue to suck into the future. So do I give up on my project now?! No! Because we have the capacity to learn a little more each day and in the pursuit of knowing everything, maybe I’ll be able to know something. So openness is incredibly important in this goal as it allows me to give up the hubris of pretending that I know with absolute certainty anything really so that I may actually uncover what is the real beauty and complexity of the world.
I believe that this is very important in the pursuit of a better worldview as one of the greatest problems I see is that a lot of people seem set in their understanding. For one reason or another you can become convinced of one particular way of viewing the world and because of it you disregard the rest. This has tremendous consequences when it comes to developing a healthy worldview. The primary one is that if you believe that you have found an absolute you will fight against anything that contradicts that claim of truth. This in its benign state will lead to word fights and topics your friends just simply avoid. Or in the extreme cases you could act out in violence to any who would oppose your view whatever the topic may be. The secondary consequence is you would miss out on viewing the world from another lens which could provide valuable insight into the world. This would lead to making choices through incomplete information. It would be like driving without any mirrors fraught with mistakes and bad consequences.
The unfortunate thing with openness is if you are too open you can become susceptible to noise. Especially in today’s media landscape we are inundated with information that is usually meaningless devoid of context and almost always provides a distorted view of the world. So striking a balance is critical where you find sources of information that are credible and reliable and you understand the biases of those who produced the information. Also being able to dissect ideas and beliefs so that you can cut false beliefs out at their foundations saves a lot of time. There is a chapter on truth later where I discuss strategies in more detail but for now the idea is less about listening to every possible source of information and more about being willing to change your beliefs on anything and being open to people who challenge your worldview cause they might be right.
So openness allows you to see more of the world and to interact with different lenses but just considering ideas is not enough to develop your worldview for that we must be capable of changing our minds on our beliefs which is where adaptability comes in.
Adaptability
Adaptability is the aspect of being able to update your beliefs once sufficient evidence is presented. We as humans have particular biases that can cause us to double down on belief systems even when they are provably false. I’m not sure where this comes from but you can see it in tons of people all over the world in all domains of knowledge. We see a particular lens of the world and are convinced fully of their validity then if presented with contradicting evidence there is a tension that is formed and we usually do one of two things. Either you accept the evidence and argument as truth and you change your beliefs or you deny it and fight the evidence and argument. Questioning evidence and argumentation are essential when it comes to truth and we should be specific about what beliefs we accept as truth, however if you find yourself on the losing side it is almost always better to accept and adapt rather than double down in falsehood.
Like openness we cannot adapt all beliefs into our worldview as there would be chaos and contradiction. Afterall we can only hold one worldview in our minds. But being static in our worldviews is also really bad. If we are unwilling to change our minds on things there is the potential to be trapped in a terrible worldview that shapes our actions towards evil. Like most things there is a balance that must be struck between listening and considering arguments and evidence then adapting the ones that have the most reasons to believe them into your worldview. This is difficult; it requires practice and dedication to examining our own beliefs. However it is essential if we are on the path of trying to form the best possible worldview that aligns with the good and reality.
It means that I hold no belief with a closed fist and that all of my assumptions are open to question and change. This means I can occupy many more ways of viewing the world so that I may understand it better and maybe uncover some truth along the way. The goal is to be open and always adapting your worldview to encompass more of reality while realizing that this is a process not a destination. This is where the third aspect comes in:
Becoming
This is just a realization of our limitations as humans on a little wet rock hurtling through space. We exist within bounds that only let us see so far into the world in both space and time. It is important to temper your hubris in trying to find the “ultimate worldview” because such a thing may never exist. Our worldviews are contextual both to where we are and when we are and needs to adapt to the circumstances that we are actually in. But the main constant of the world is change and with that all of the context’s change who we are changes so why should our worldview remain static? Becoming allows us to temper our bias towards believing that we are right and instead invites us to be curious about the world and open to new possibilities. We should remain forever open to adapting to the world so that our worldview is always in a state of becoming something else.
Perhaps call this detail?
Nuance
Nuance is the idea that there are often more concepts at play than just the ones you see when answering any given question. There are many ways of looking at the world and part of questioning well is the ability to see the world in many shades of gray and from many angles. There are often ideas that are missed or someone’s story that is buried so being able to expand your awareness to be sensitive to these complexities becomes very handy when understanding the world.
Sometimes the way that questions are framed and the context given leaves out important information that can force the person answering it to a specific answer. Sometimes there are malicious people who are trying to get you to see the world from their perspective to get you to overlook the evil they are commiting. Sometimes there isn’t a verifiable “true” answer and so you have to either assert some answer or withhold judgment. Having nuanced thinking means that you are able to see these issues with questions and beliefs and be able to find the best answers through the complexity while simultaneously being open to different perspectives and ideals.
Synergy
A common theme that will keep coming up is interconnectedness and the synergy between concepts in a system acting as a whole. The above principles don’t exist within isolation, they exist and are useful in relation to each other and the beliefs that fill your worldview. They create a symphony that produces useful beliefs and in turn those beliefs affect how you use the meta beliefs. I see this whole concept like a ballroom dance. There are the dancers, the symphony and the ballroom. If the timing is off or a selfish dancer hogs the attention the room is dull and painful. All together they must work in time and with each other when done well beauty flows forth from the room bringing tears of joy and gold of heart.
Just like a ballroom dance, to have a worldview that works well requires that the concepts play well together. The meta beliefs keep the harmony and direction and the context of your life, what you want, where you are going and what brings meaning mustn’t be forgotten. Losing some of these aspects leads to the whole collapsing and incoherence comes forth. So balance it all well and respect the synergy of your mind. Just as a discordant note can disrupt the beauty of a symphony, so too can a misaligned belief or a neglected meta-principle undermine the effectiveness of our actions and our overall sense of well-being.
Our understanding of the world is not a table of facts or a stirring pot of boiling emotions instead it is a dynamic dance of ideas. By embracing this reality into your worldview you will find that beauty flows from the world and who you are becomes a participant in the dance of life.
Conclusion
The goal here with all of this is to increase our awareness of the beliefs that we hold. They warp how we see the world and inform us on what is good and true. We then take that and act out there in the world where our beliefs become real and have consequences. We often take our belief systems for granted and don’t question the underlying assumptions that we have about the world. The rest of this book is an attempt at moving through all the great existential questions looking at them through my meta beliefs and uncovering all the tools that I used to answer them.
My second goal here in writing this book is to create a better way of building our worldviews so that we may actually solve the massive societal issues that we have. I believe that we have the money and the technologies to solve all of our problems and there is enough people power to make it happen. Why have we not? I think this is due to a lack of will on all levels of society, individual , local , federal and global because the common worldview is incapable of considering the massive problems that we face and it doesn’t take into account the complexity of the situation we are in. How do I believe that I can solve this? I alone cannot. We have to be able to work together and build solutions that work for each of us and all of us in our unique contexts. So instead of proposing one singular thing that will somehow bring total harmony I humbly ask that we consider more the perspective of others. To critically examine our worldviews and to build understanding that can consider the whole world with its complexity and nuance.
The way I do this is through a few guiding ideals. Openness: the ability to be open to all ideas while not getting overloaded with noise and nonsense. Adaptability: the ability to change your beliefs once sufficient criteria are met and to withhold our judgment of any particular belief and instead engage with and challenge yours and every belief. Becoming this is a temperament that says the universe is incredibly complex and my beliefs will always be flawed. This is not a call to give up and stop looking, it is a call to action and curiosity to be always considering new and conflicting ideas. It is the realization that you will always be seeking truth and good but you will never arrive and in doing so you will always be becoming something else, something new and along the way you might learn something. Then there is balance and nuance which looks at the complexity and embraces it saying that we must always be willing to look at problems from different perspectives and there are usually many ideas that are competing and to take any one of them to the extreme is to fail in answering the issue. Finally there is the synergistic understanding that all these ideas don’t exist in isolation but are interconnected with each other and the rest of your belief system. All of these ideas should be balanced with each other into a dynamic equilibrium that creates an understanding that is greater than any individual ideal or belief could. With these ideals we can begin to dissect the difficult questions and hopefully find some good answers or at the least the tools for anyone to solve them for themselves.