If You Don't Understand Anyone Else's Worldview, Then You Don't Understand Your Own

Everyone inherits a worldview from birth (whether they realize it or not)

“For any of us to be fully conscious intellectually we should not only be able to detect the worldviews of others but be aware of our own — why it is ours and why in light of so many options we think it is true”

-James W Sire

For the past three months I have been waking up at 5:30 am to attend a Christian book club where we read and scrutinize C.S. Lewis's defense of Christianity in his book Mere Christianity.

I am the only non-Christian in this book club.

This experience has made me aware of a serious problem which definitely exists in the United States, but is very likely to be a global issue as well.

The problem is that no one can understand why I have any interest in this book club if I am not a Christian, or considering becoming one.

People have asked me:

"Why would you do that?"

"How can you have anything to learn from these people?"

"Aren't they all crazy?"

The truth is that it is becoming increasingly rare to find a group of intellectually serious people to discuss philosophical questions and ideas with, and this particular group consists of several people who are genuinely looking to be challenged in their beliefs and explore new ideas. It also really matters to them what the answers are.

This makes for good philosophical conversation and has forced me to improve my understanding of my own beliefs.

This experience has also helped me appreciate the following harsh truth:

If you don't understand anyone else's worldview, then you don't really understand your own.

No one's worldview exists in isolation from anyone else's.

What this means is that there are elements and influences in your own worldview that came from someone else's worldview that cannot be properly understood or appreciated in isolation.

What Is A Worldview?

A worldview is a system of beliefs and ideas through which we experience the world.

It is the unique set of lenses that make certain things appear reasonable, valuable, and meaningful to you.

If you have spent your entire life seeing through the same prescription, then you will never truly be able to understand how things look different to other people and how your perceptions relate to theirs.

That would be like trying to draw a world map without including any other countries or continents.

For most of human history, the ignorance of other belief systems and cultures was understandable. Information moved slowly, and most people were not even able to read. In the modern world, however, we have no excuse.

Modern human beings have access to virtually unlimited information, research, and resources that enable them to understand any subject better than previous human beings ever could.

Imagine what Aristotle would have done with an internet connection.

When Aristotle founded his philosophical school The Lyceum, he tasked his students with collecting and studying all of the existing constitutions of various city-states in order to figure out what the ideal form of government was. This study was the basis of his famous treatise Politics.

Aristotle's answers were, no doubt, significantly biased towards Greek ideas, but that is the point — he was trying to transcend his own worldview. I wonder what kind of research projects and books he would have written with the help of modern technology?

The level of closed-minded skepticism and utter disinterest in spending any time learning and studying a worldview that is different than one's own is very concerning to me.

How many Christians have read even a single book about Islam? How many atheists have read the Bible? How many Buddhists have read Nietzsche?

We live in a multi-cultural and globalized world.

Human beings are being forced to interact and work together more than any time in human history to solve global problems.

If we do not begin to understand and appreciate different ways of seeing the world, then we will continue to misunderstand, oppress, and kill one another. Eventually this will lead to global death and destruction from the multitude of existential threats we face as a species.

There are several objections someone could raise against taking some time out of their lives to study and appreciate different worldviews.

First, someone could say that they simply don't have time.

Perhaps you are an overworked blue-collar American, and a Christian. You barely have time to read your own Bible let alone learn about any other philosophical worldview.

To this I would encourage you to question whether your current worldview is really serving you.

If you barely have time to read a handful of books throughout your life that address life's biggest questions, then are you really living in a society, culture, or sub-culture that has your best interests in mind?

Most Americans are heavily influenced by a Capitalistic worldview without even realizing it. This can be harmful when it prevents certain ways of living from even being considered, even if these ways of living would improve one’s own happiness.

Second, someone could say that they have no interest in learning about other cultures or ways of seeing the world, because their life is already good as it is.

Every worldview that exists will naturally benefit some people more than others in the form of things like social status and material rewards. If you are someone who has a pretty good life and feels like your worldview is serving you well, then I would encourage you to consider the following question:

How do you know that your worldview is truly serving you?

If you don't really understand other ways of thinking and living that are possible for human beings, how do you know that the way you think and live is what you would ideally want for yourself?

The complacent attitude is risky.

It involves a certain level of material and intellectual comfort which can lead to someone living a certain way for several decades without ever questioning it, only to find later that they are full of regret for pursuing and valuing the wrong things, and failing to explore all that life has to offer.

There is a handful of people who will live and die according to one worldview, never question it, and never regret anything in their lifetime.

Maybe they lived the good life, maybe not.

We can’t really know without attempting to answer philosophical questions about our lives.

I suspect that most people aren’t so sure they are living the life they truly want and would like to find out.

“All human beings by nature desire to know”

-Aristotle

Environmental Determinism And Birthview

The forces of environmental determinism are incredibly strong.

If you want to construct an ideal life for yourself, then you will need to understand and appreciate the strength of these forces, and commit to fighting against them everyday.

This is the only way to preserve your freedom and agency.

The first quarter of every human life is largely pre-determined by factors outside of our control, such as where we were born and who raised us.

Most importantly, these two variables are strongly correlated with the worldview that we inherit at birth and internalize during childhood.

Let's call this your birthview.

Whether they realize it or not, everyone is living out their life in accordance with some set of ideas about what the world is like, what is valuable, and what should and should not be done in this world.

It would simply not be possible to live a life without this being the case.

Many human beings live and die without ever changing or renegotiating their birthview.

Everyone knows some people who want to spend their entire lives in the same place they grew up, and have no interest in considering living anywhere else.

It is also very likely that these same people want to think and believe the same way they grew up thinking and believing, and have no interest in considering other ways of thinking.

They physically and mentally comfortable.

Again, a worldview is something that we live and see through, meaning that it is an internalized philosophy for living. As long as one is living and seeing exclusively through this perspective, it can be very difficult to see any reason to change it, especially if it is "working" for you.

Some people are totally comfortable with the thought that they will never choose their worldview for themselves, but simply live a good life with the one they were given. This kind of thinking is likely a part of their inherited birthview in some deep way. For example, if your birthview is monotheistic, then it is very likely that your birthview contains a command or requirement not to change or question it in any radical way.

Personally, I have always found this thought to be absolutely terrifying.

The thought of living my entire life without knowing what is possible, without exploring different ways of thinking, acting, and living is terrifying.

It is terrifying to me in the same way that being sentenced to life in prison for a crime I didn't commit is terrifying.

It feels like a complete rejection of my freedom as a human being.

Perhaps it is part of the worldview that I have inherited that I am naturally a very individualistic thinker who values freedom, agency, and self-determination. Perhaps one day I will renounce these things to join a collective community built around externally determined purposes, rules, and rituals.

The thing is, that if I do end up adopting a worldview like that, then it will be because I chose to do so.

It will be because I chose that living that way is my highest purpose and calling.

In short, it will be an exercise of my freedom to give up my freedom.

What I cannot accept is being forced to live a certain way, doing so by accident, or doing so because of a lack of curiosity or ignorance.

To me, that would be a failure to exercise my responsibility to determine my own life for myself.

Again, there are some worldviews according to which it is not up to me to determine my own purpose for myself. The fact that I cannot accept these worldviews without studying and questioning them first is an expression of my own worldview.

Is there any independent standard according to which human beings can determine which worldviews are better than others, or whether a single worldview is correct?

This is a very hard question that I plan to write extensively about in future publications.

For now, I will say that I am very skeptical that there is a "view from nowhere", or a perspective which we can adopt to evaluate worldviews which is not itself a worldview.

This raises deep existential problems for human beings, and potentially throws objective truth into question.

That is a problem I cannot ignore, but will have to address another time.

Writing Your Philosophical Auto-Biography

I have argued that it is important to interrogate one’s birthview in order to begin constructing one’s ideal life and avoid living in unfreedom.

How does one begin to do this?

One suggestion I have is to try and write your own philosophical auto-biography, or worldview genealogy.

Here is a very probing question to get you started:

How did you arrive at your current worldview?

If you aren’t confident that you know what your current worldview even is, answering this question will help.

Thinking and writing about how you came to believe what you believe is a great way to come to know your own beliefs more deeply. Here are some further questions that can help your writing process:

• Where were you born and what are the dominant worldviews there?

• What worldview did your parents have?

• What life experiences had the most impact on your growing up?

• What books had the most impact on you?

• What kind of music did you listen to?

• What other countries did you travel to and what did you find strange?

It is important to know what you believe, but it is also important to think about how you came to believe in what you believe.

A philosophical history of yourself.

A genealogy of your birthview.

This is an incredibly powerful way to begin awakening your freedom for self-creation. Knowing how you came to be, your origin story, is the first step toward rewriting it.

The majority of my life has been heavily shaped by the Western intellectual tradition of Secular Humanism.

It wasn’t until recently that I became fully aware of how much of my thoughts, emotions, values, and beliefs have been shaped by this. It wasn’t until I began challenging these beliefs by studying new ways of thinking and talking to people who think very differently than me that I really felt like I knew myself intellectually.

Even getting a PhD in Philosophy did little to challenge my pre-existing paradigm since it was heavily biased towards a very specific philosophical tradition (Western Analytic Philosophy) that mostly just reinforced what I believed before I started.

The benefit of my PhD was that I became an expert in the tradition I was raised in which gave me a solid foundation from which to explore other traditions.

Start where you are currently at, venture out, and return home to see what has changed.

More recently, I have been exploring continental philosophy, eastern philosophy and religion, as well as pre-Axial Age ways of thinking.

This has been incredibly exciting and liberating.

It has opened up space for personal, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth.

Most importantly, by understanding other ways of thinking and living, I feel better able to relate to and learn from other human beings who I disagree with.

The ability to do this is vital to the future of our species, and also a key part of the good life.

We are all on the same journey, whether we realize it or not.

I look forward to hearing about your philosophical auto-biographies in the comments.

-Paul