The Importance Of Understanding Our Worldview
A worldview is formed in us over time, solidifying as we experience the numerous events of life. They shape how we interpret and interact with our surroundings and environment. However, it’s normal to have moments in life when we question what we believe in and our beliefs. As we grow older, we can start realizing that our worldviews no longer blends with our new understanding of the world around us and ourselves. This can be quite challenging. However, understanding where our worldviews come from can help us evaluate and change them to better reflect reality and live a more enjoyable and meaningful life.
Our worldviews play a powerful role in our relationships with nature, whether were consciously aware of them or not. When discussing about environmental issues, seeing the problems from the perspective of someone from an entirely different socioeconomic, political background or religious from our own could help us get a better understanding and could make our own values and worldviews become clearer. These points are important to understand but what the world is also facing is a lack of actual intimate contact with nature that could help many understand the beliefs involved with environmental problems. Going to the wild, green spaces could develop in an individual a deeper care to the environmental issues.
In the Council of Pecans, one of the many chapters in the book Braiding Sweetgrass, Dr. Kimmerer suggests that the trees do not act as individuals, but as a joint community. And in that collective is the power of unity. What happens to one happens to them all. This shows that in order to make a change and to influence other in making the right choice and guiding them in the right path, we have to work together. Windigo Footprints, which is another chapter in Dr. Kimmerer’s book, explain how the survival of the community is dependent on the willingness of every member to only take a reasonable amount of scarce resources. This value was so important to the community that a member who would not control their greedy behavior could be banished from the community and let alone to wander alone in the wilderness, like the Windigo.
In order to make change in the environment we have to be able to control our consumption and to not overdo it. To take only what we need and make good use of it. We have to think about our consumption limitation. This definitely could be difficult in a world focused on seeking happiness through materialistic goods but it can be done if you remember that just because your friends have it does not mean you need it and to borrow goods that you would need and would not think twice about buying. People can change and review their values, the difficulty is getting people on board. James Clear (2018), an American author, explains that in order change from our fixed mindset to a growth mindset, we have to believe change is possible. For a belief to be true, it must be meaningful, it must line up with the real world, and it must not only help us survive in daily life, but allow us to flourish. Everyone, without exception, lives out their worldview beliefs in life. When a large proportion of the population holds worldview beliefs which lead to destruction and degradation, it is expected to be influenced and expressed in society and in individual lives.
According to Hans-Rudolf Zulliger, a Swiss researcher, many believe that our actions cannot have any negative consequence on nature and ignore the potential risks that we could actually cause. He explains that the path to sustainability requires “broad knowledge, attentiveness and the willingness to do the right thing”. An understanding of worldview can give us stability by providing knowledge about what we believe. A lack of confidence about what we believe can lead to internal insecurity. This insecurity causes us to doubt ourselves and to not be able to stand strong against opposing and conflicting ideas we may come across. Also, having a deep understanding of worldview allow us to make a difference in society and in other people’s lives. There are a lot of bad things going on in the world which can be dealt in a better way if we prioritize the important values.
