A worldview is always a lifetime in the making. On this Substack we want to aid those looking to actively construct their worldview. Not content to believe what you are told, you want to take up the quest of creating your own picture of reality. As stated, this will take a lifetime, but with a concerted effort you can establish lasting foundations and get a head start in a few weeks or months.
In this article you will learn why you would want to construct your own worldview, how to identify the worldview you already have and what you want to retain from it, and then some pointers on how to construct a new worldview. To put it in the jargon of a previous article, this article will attempt to clarify how to formulate a total worldview for the individual that is constructed and highly discursive. A total worldview is aimed at the whole world but is composed of worldview fragments, which relate to parts of the world. Constructed worldviews are opposite to adopted worldviews, though inevitably all worldviews are a combination of adopted beliefs and attitudes and constructed ones. Discursive worldviews are theoretically articulated while lived worldviews constitute actual practice. The goal is to have a discursive worldview that is also lived, thereby put into practice as a guide for the everyday. Finally, the individual is the central actor here, though highly convincing worldviews could potentially be adopted by others to form a collective worldview.1 For good measure, we also restate the working definition of worldview from the same article mentioned above. For more information, do take a look at the previous article.
A worldview is a set of assumptions, tacit and/or explicit, and their derived beliefs and attitudes that sets up a frame of reference or conceptual framework for interpretation and action. This framework is pre-configured by experience—personal and cultural—to select certain features of the world as being explanatory, others as being in need of explanation, and still others as being in need of correction. It makes claims about how the world is and how it functions, thereby performing social, psychological, and existential or spiritual functions essential to individual and collective life. The framework aims to be comprehensive or total, while being composed of worldview fragments that are applicable only to some aspect(s) of the world; it can be constructed or adopted, lived (put in practice) or merely discursive, and individual or collective.
Reasons why
We believe that a considered worldview is essential for a good life. Thinking through your beliefs and attitudes and the assumptions that you hold about life and the world equips you with the depth of reflection needed to make good decisions. It allows you to refocus on the things that you value and from which you derive meaning. A proper worldview will provide the fundamental experiences of your life with the prominence they demand, thereby orientating your life’s plan and future accordingly. Your judgments will be accurate and your words and actions in line with your values. What’s more, to construct your own worldview is a first-rate act of self-expression and self-actualisation. Both key to living a good life.
Constructing a worldview, and critical reflection on your received worldview more broadly, allows you to live a more authentic life. You won’t be the simple product of your surroundings. Instead, you will strike a balance between what is given and what is acquired; your actions will be guided more by causes that originate from within you than those from without.
The self-examination that comes with worldview construction makes you conscious of your presuppositions and biases, and the beliefs and attitudes that derive from them. As such, you may gain a better understanding of what kind of person you are, and consequently improve on yourself by recalibrating those foundational ideas and habits.
In the same vein, you will be a more understanding person when encountering people of a different worldview. You will know how difficult it is to step out of your own frame of reference. Your explorations of other worldviews for the purposes of constructing your own will attune you to the different points of view out there.
We also have a duty to investigate the world in which we find ourselves thrown into, for “the unexamined life is not worth living”. Our reasons for acting and our arguments for believing should be sound, and conflicting beliefs should be either discarded or sublated.
A robust worldview lays the foundation for mental resilience. It allows you to form accurate expectations and put difficulties and challenges into a long-term perspective. Through worldview construction you may identify the causes of your psychological suffering and relieve your anguish by providing a context in which it becomes meaningful.
Finally, a worldview can be shared. You may find people of the same mindset with which you can share your thoughts and with whom you may form communities of support.
Determining your starting worldview
By the time we reach adulthood, some worldview has taken shape in our mind and is busy administrating our thoughts, acting like the sediment in a river that directs the flows of water in overt and subtle ways. Before you can start refashioning your worldview, you should become aware of the one already in place. This has its origins in the culture in which you grew up and in your experiences with the world as an individual. You should therefore 1) observe your culture and 2) practice introspection.
Following questions are helpful when observing your culture. What are the topics discussed and what judgments are made in public discourse? For example, whether abortion is discussed or not, and if not or no longer, how it is judged—with approval or not. You can always look at the worldview (fragment) that informs this judgment, in this case religious or secular. Second, what is understood by the terms freedom and equality? These are vague terms that are laden with values and applied differently by different cultures and individuals. Wage labour can be construed as the freedom to buy and sell labour on the labour market, or the unfreedom of the modern serf, the wage slave. Meritocracy can be construed as breaking the inequalities of class privilege or as reinforcing socio-economic disparities. Third, what is deemed progressive and conservative? For example, whether action on climate change is still a political issue—perhaps due to a politically influential science-sceptic worldview. Fourth, which metaphysical positions are considered to be ridiculous and which ones are common sense? Perhaps reductive physicalism is common sense, and all non-physical phenomena are either non-existent (as in the case of God) or to be reduced to a physical substrate (as in the case of consciousness) or nonsensical. More questions to ask are whether there is an emphasis on the individual or on the collective, whether the society is optimistic or pessimistic about the future, what the views are on technology and nature, and what the relation is between rationalism and spiritualism or reason and faith.
On the personal introspective level, you should notice your feelings about or gut reactions to the ideas, attitudes, and thinkers that you encounter. This is also a clue for identifying worldview fragments to incorporate. However, it is of course important to remain critical of agreeable ideas and to give a fair hearing to offensive ones. Following questions and their possible answers can guide you in your introspection. What gives meaning to your life? To be creative in art, science, or philosophy; to experience beauty, truth, love, or goodness; to be heroic in politics, business, or activism; to care for family, friends, community, or tradition; to touch the divine or spiritual, … What sources of knowledge do you trust? Science, scripture, artists, technologists, political leaders, your feelings or instinct, algorithms, rationality, mystical experience, philosophy, … What is valuable to you? Family, solidarity, service, community, faith, knowledge, wisdom, self-actualisation, self-expression, creativity, equality, freedom, success, status, power, pleasure, … What injustices and shortcomings do you see in society? Oppression of minorities and women; lack of faith or lack of rationality; too little beauty and art; hedonism and lust for money; inequality or unfreedom; lack of virtue and moral qualities, … What historical era or cultural heritage do you feel most close to? The enlightenment era, classical Greece or Rome, Mediaeval Europe, the Islamic golden age, Indian Hindu civilisation, Confucian China, … What kind of art are you attracted to? Romantic art depicting the individual in connection to nature; classical art recounting the stories of heroes and their deeds; postmodern art that deconstructs narratives to give a voice to the Other, …
Finally, it could be that there is some overriding fundamental experience that is the ground of your current worldview and that should remain so. Some feature of the world that strikes you as being its core, holding a truth that goes deeper than other truths. An experience so valuable or reprehensible that it demands the dedication of a lifetime. A deep desire for truth and knowledge; the intolerable oppressiveness of social injustice; the phenomenal explanatory power of science and reason; the radical contingency of the world’s cultures and morals; the raging pace of technological progress; a sense of partaking in the grand cosmic evolution of consciousness; the Adamic fall from grace and quest for salvation; the heroic struggle for a political ideal; the careless destruction of nature; the power and vitality of a life-affirming philosophy.
How to build a worldview
Constructing a worldview is an iterative process of review, revision, and refinement. It is about investigating foreign worldviews and circling back to your own to adjust and adapt. This is foremost an exercise in interpretation and empathy. While the process takes a lifetime, it is likely that the basic foundational presuppositions are already rock solid. Take time to critically evaluate your adopted beliefs, practices, and values, consciously retaining some and discarding others. Tradition and faith can certainly have their place, if these are important to you, but it should be balanced with reason and scepticism. Honest worldview building requires a great deal of research into the worldviews and worldview fragments out there. Bias and emotion are inevitable and can serve as a guide, but they must be tempered by learning to see the world through the eyes of others.
As discussed in a previous article, a total worldview should aim to answer following seven questions in a way that is satisfactory to you.2
What is? This question leads to an ontology or a model of reality as a whole. A worldview should give some insight into how the world is structured and what entities are present in it.
Where does it all come from? A worldview should put forward some explanatory principles and should present a model of the past.
Where are we going? A worldview should make some predictions and present a model of the future.
What is good and what is bad? This question relates to values. A worldview should provide an axiology or a theory of values that deals with morality, ethics, and aesthetics.
What must we do? Given a set of values, how should we go about realising our goals? Worldviews should answer these questions by affording principles that guide our actions, thereby giving us a praxeology or theory of actions.
What is true and what is false? This question is about epistemology or theory of knowledge, which determines how and even if we can attain the knowledge sought after in questions one to three.
What makes life meaningful? A worldview should meet the human need for meaning from a personal, social, and cosmic point of view, providing direction and consolation in times of hardship.
Arriving at convincing answers is the difficult part, of course. A natural way to to start is by setting up various dichotomies and oppositions between fragments, which can help bring out differences.3 For example, communism and capitalism or reductionism and holism. However, we should be mindful that these are mostly artificial dichotomies and that the world does not necessarily align with our projected categories. What’s more, apparent oppositions can also be overcome by a third term that integrates the opposites—this is called dialectical thinking. The social market economy of many European welfare states is one way of synthesising the communist and capitalist opposition. Systems theory and emergence can be viewed as overcoming the divide between reductionism and holism. A last word of warning is directed at the use of metaphors, especially those dominant in a culture, as thinkers of all ages have had the inclination to use the metaphors of their day to explain the world. Memory, for example, has been characterised as a wax tablet, a book, a photograph, and a hard disk.4 This is not to say that there is no truth to any metaphor or that there is no structural element preserved between metaphors, but that we should be careful to note where the metaphor starts and where it ends.
It is obvious, but in practice difficult, that a worldview should be practical and put into practice. Formulating a discursive worldview by collecting a handful of interesting ideas can be fun but if it fails to convince you in a deep way it will remain just that. Remaining in the vicinity of your inherited beliefs and biases will make the transition from an abstract worldview to a lived one easier. Grand restructurings of beliefs are unlikely to stick. The fragments that you decide upon should also cohere well—inconsistencies are deadly, both for convincing yourself and for actual practice as it leads to contradictions. Once constructed, continued meditation and reflection is necessary to internalise the worldview. The theoretical beliefs and reasonings will seep into daily life and inform your actions only when given sufficient time and attention. Time will also further refine the worldview and give you the mental flexibility to cut out parts that do not sit well after all.
Finally, it should be said that there is no belief that is wholly justifiable and without problems. This is especially the case for the far-ranging beliefs of a worldview. Realise that worldviews are always somewhat provisional but that this should not paralyse you. You can hesitate for a lifetime but life must be lived now. A leap of faith is sometimes necessary, because beliefs can be true without being certain.
Further reading and resources
Two books (with a Christian bias) that can help with worldview construction:
“The Universe Next Door: A Basic Worldview Catalog” by James W. Sire
“What's Your Worldview?: An Interactive Approach to Life's Big Questions” by James N. Anderson
A test based on academic research that classifies people in one of four broad worldviews: https://wvtest.com/
For several of these distinctions, see also Staf Hellemans, The many faces of the world World views in agrarian civilisations and in modern societies, in https://www.vub.be/CLEA/dissemination/groups-archive/vzw_worldviews/publications/worldviews2part1.pdf
Partially adapted from Vidal, C. (2008) Wat is een wereldbeeld? (What is a worldview?), in Van Belle, H. & Van der Veken, J., Editors, Nieuwheid denken. De wetenschappen en het creatieve aspect van de werkelijkheid, in press. Acco, Leuven.
See our articles on the different worldview fragments: metaphysical fragments, social and political fragments, scientific fragment.
Metaphors of Memory: A History of Ideas about the Mind by Douwe Draaisma.