Worldviews and the Game of Life

Worldviews and Real Life--Examples

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In the game of life you constantly interact with people. The outcome of serious confrontations—constructive information exchange, compromise, dispute resolution, personal growth, or uncompromising standoffishness, fighting, relationship breakdown, fear—often critically depends on the participants’ worldviews and how well they understand and accept them. As in sitting down to play cards, the better idea you have of the cards each person holds, the easier it will be to steer the game's outcome to your liking! Now, using cards in the form of worldview themes (the names are ours' here at project Worldview, you'll find complete descriptions of each of them elsewhere on this website), we can help you appreciate the issues in some interactions we can imagine:

A woman and man, she an artist, he a scientist, are physically attracted to each other. They talk over coffee. The woman initially lets slip that she holds these cards: “Vitalism,” “Monotheism,” “The Artistic Worldview,” and “Valuing Traditions and Traditional Gender Roles.” The man similarly admits to holding “Scientific Materialism,” “Secular Humanism,” “Scientific Method,” and “Working for Change.” They discover they both have latched onto “The Golden Rule, Village Ethic of Mutual Help,” and “Valuing Family.” Is there enough common ground here to build a long-term relationship?

In empathizing with her clients, a social worker imagines that life has typically dealt them “Struggling With a Basic Need: Sustenance,” “Struggling With a Basic Need: Self Esteem,” “Independent Living for the Sick and Disabled,” “Servitude,” and “Addiction.” She then asks herself, “Why do I do this?” given the cards she holds. “Service to Others,” “Tough Love,” “Valuing Human Rights,” “Working for Change,” and “Social Welfare Statism,” she surmises.

Community leaders and corporate executives discuss a proposal to build a factory. A cloud of mistrust hangs over the meeting. Despite corporate PR efforts to present their hand as including “Populism,” “Ethical Orientation,” “Belonging to Nature,” “Corporate Capitalism (with responsibility to all stakeholders),” “Environmental Economics,” and “The Attitudinal Fix Mentality,” the community is concerned that “Elitism,” “Seeking Wealth and Power,” “Expansionism,” “Corporate Capitalism (without responsibility to all stakeholders),” “Imperialism,” and “The Technological Fix Mentality” cards really sit in their hand. If community activists play “Cynicism” and “Conspiracism” cards, the dialogue may abruptly end!

Consider a military police interrogator interviewing terrorist suspects. He is looking for evidence of a worldview characterized by certain cards: “True Believer,” “Proud Identification,” “Bitterness and Vengeance,” “Scapegoating,” and “The Threatening Person.” Can he figure out which cards they hold and act before it’s too late?

Suppose a newspaper publisher sits down with Senate candidates before she decides whom to endorse. While she knows their positions on some issues and is particularly concerned about budget deficits, in general she’s wondering which candidate’s worldview is most compatible with cards dearest to her. Those cards are “Pay As You Go Approach,” “Sustainability,” “Global Vision: The Big Picture,” “Global Citizen,” and “Ethical Globalization.”

The above worldview descriptions use only two to seven worldview themes each. Here at project Worldview we offer (on this website) a quick characterization, called "Top Cards and Discards" which employs sixteen themes, and a full blown one using all eighty themes: the “Worldview Analysis” program. This has you input scores on previously completed questionnaires. It then analyzes your worldview in thirty-six categories (actually eighteen pairs, the first three: Reason / Faith, Reductionistic / Wholistic, Tolerant / Intolerant) and according to six different religious, spiritual, or ethical traditions (Christian, Confucian, Green, Hindu, Islam, New Age), and checks it for internal consistency. If you're interested in characterizing your own worldview, and embodying that characterization in a customized deck of fifty-two playing cards you create, the "Custom Cards" program will help you do just that!.

The project Worldview approach to characterizing worldviews can be useful in solving problems with an attitudinal driven behavioral component in three ways. First, by using it one gains understanding needed for empathizing; second, it aids the search for bridge values and common ground; finally, it offers a way to attack, and monitor progress toward solving, seemingly intractable social problems. The approach here is to characterize the worldview(s) behind the problem, envision the worldview(s) that can solve it, and design a plan to bring about needed change.

To illustrate, consider the “Worldview Analysis” program’s last category: Global Happiness Index / Eventual Misery for All. The program evaluates worldviews based on their compatibility with eighteen themes believed to contribute to long-term human happiness and eighteen themes connected with eventual misery. Based on public opinion survey data (using around 470 questions), the worldview of a typical American adult scores 57.1% on the former and 42.9% on the latter. If sustainable human well-being was a national goal, then an effort could be launched to encourage certain attitudes and behaviors, and discourage others. Could be that healthy worldviews are needed for the game of life to continue!

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