Part Four: Our Response

In the past, to live in community meant that we had to know who we were and what we believed and valued. Community granted each of us the right to be different and to have our own unique worldview. Today, individual difference no longer matters and different worldviews are not welcomed. It is culture that is king and we are its servants in this new world of pseudo-reality. 

Living in pseudo-reality reduces life to reactions. There is a “testing of the waters” to determine the pressure points of culture and an expectation to adjust to those points. We can’t stop looking at our phones, checking Facebook and Twitter and updating our status … each is a means by which we adjust to culture. And, each adjustment makes us more insular, more addicted to ourselves and more comfortable with the external impact of culture on us. We have slowly become conditioned to live a life that, to be honest, is something less than human.

Socrates taught us long ago that failing to examine one’s own life renders it worthless, and yet, most of us don’t even consider self-examination anymore. We are too busy pointing out the flaws others, forgetting that we are just as flawed. Not too long ago we were admonished to be tolerant of everyone, to strive for equality and to fight for freedom of expression, and yet, today, we fight for none of these things … in fact, we are now encouraged to fight against them. There is no longer tolerance, only judgement; those stiving for equality no longer want it, and freedom of expression has been exchanged for a specific cultural vernacular to which everyone must submit or risk severe consequences. And yet, we are still told that this is freedom. I don’t see freedom; I see something very different.

What we are seeing today is a total capitulation to culture. Each day we test the “proverbial” waters and then, we adjust our lives accordingly. This reduces our life to daily aberrations which pull us further away from who we really are—providing us no comfort and certainly no purpose—while pushing us towards something less than human. We have actually stop thinking and become a reiteration of our culture.

Sadly, culture has vanquished the individual worldview and declared it defective. We now live in a pseudo-reality that is plastic and one dimensional … one that positions us into a constant state of anxiety due to our daily struggle of determination, which is, in essence, the process of getting. We must get our values and beliefs from culture. We must get our worldviews from culture. We even get our language from culture, and whether we realize it or not, we now get our approval from culture as well. We have become so conditioned to getting that we are losing our ability to give, except when it comes to worldviews, which we have given to culture without much of a fight. 

Giving is a distinctly human action; it is one that separates us from all other creatures. Without our own unique worldview, we are reduced to that of an animal seeking a survivable habitat. In the animal kingdom, it is the habitat that is king and all animals submit to it. Sound familiar? We actually have stepped back into time, back to the daily struggle of survival, but instead of fighting for food and water we are now fighting for our soul and our humanity. 

All hope is not lost however! There are answers and all of them begin where this journey began … with worldviews. How you see and perceive the world will determine who you are in the world. Understanding how worldviews work and that they are under attack is a good first step but it is only one step; there are other steps and each of them are difficult. The next step is perhaps the most difficult. We must understand the power education has over our worldviews because, like it or not, education has a lot to do with who we are today.

The foundation of your worldview began way back in grammar school when you were taught math and English by a teacher who also taught you something else … what is right and true. Every school, no matter its orientation, teaches from a view of the world which defines what is right and true for its students. Worldviews begin at home but they are always built in conjunction with schools because every child goes to school. 

As parents, we trust our schools with our children in regard to academics, but what about beliefs and values? Have you ever asked whether the school’s beliefs and values, which the school presents as true and right, align with your beliefs and values? The dirty little secret that no one wants to talk about is this one: as soon as your children reach middle school, if they participate in just one extra-curricular activity, they will spend more waking hours at school than they will with you at home.

Back to Socrates, he proclaimed that when we examine our lives we are living lives worth living, but the exam he referenced is not a one-time exam; it was a constant and thorough examination process that was to be lifelong. I think part of what Socrates was referencing was the refining process of worldviews. When we examine our lives we must examine them in regard to who we are and where we fit in this world. We must be willing to make changes, reinforcing some beliefs while eliminating others, but this is all to be done internally as we interact with others, learn from others and grow with others.

A consistently examined life is one that is truly free. It is a life that is reflective and not one that is constantly reactive. A life worth living gives more than it gets. It seeks to understand others. It is humble and different. What is the answer to this attack on individual worldviews? Examine your life to determine whether you are living a life worth living, engage the world with who you are in a humble loving way and embrace the old biblical adage that it is better to give than to receive (or get) and then you will understand why worldviews are so important, why defective worldviews are so destructive and what makes you truly human. Here’s a hint … it is not culture.