One of the most omnipresent and consistent historical forces that profoundly influences the human journey and a peoples’ collective transformation continues to be their ‘worldview.’ Indeed, the forces of history and worldview inform and influence each other through the subtle interplay and relationships of all life on earth. It is a people’s worldviews that help them understand the world around them and defines their responses to it.
A people’s worldviews take intangible ideas, perspectives, knowledge and values and translate them into systems of governance, patterns of organization and interaction, models of institutions and a nation’s methods of conducting their internal and external affairs. Indeed, history provides the best examples that demonstrate how a peoples’ worldview has shaped responses to their realities. For instance, a people’s decision to either declare war or to make peace is often determined by the way it gives meaning to concepts such as ‘security’ and ‘peace.’
However, because the earth is inhabited by so many cultures, beliefs, and because every human life requires the same basic elements to survive in an environment where the earth’s natural resources are shrinking, there is an overwhelming temptation for one’s worldview to dominate and control others. This has led a worldview of domination and power as modeled by the early explorers from Spain, England, France and Portugal that sailed around the earth and claimed land after land under the flag of their crowns. Most were looking for gold and gems to fund ongoing feuds and enrich royal coffers. In America during the 19th century, “Manifest Destiny” set the justification for ‘takings’ where it says that territorial expansion of the United States is not only inevitable, but divinely ordained.
Under this belief, the indigenous people of Turtle Island – the Native Americans – were not viewed as ‘human’, and therefore, had no rights of any kind. In much of Europe and America, slavery was just business that was economically driven. Slaves were no more than ‘property’, a tool to till the earth, plant and harvest the crops, as well as a disposable commodity to use as one pleased. It was a male dominated world with a male ‘worldview’ that held women in much the same light with the justification this was how things were meant to be. It was this worldview that reinforced and fueled systems, cultures and governments to impose their will, and ‘take’ whatever they pleased since these acts were all perceived as right and justifiable under one guise or the other (‘might is right’).
Currently, this same worldview enables the forces of globalism to carry out its agenda of gluttonous consumerism and exploitation through multi-national corporations and global institutions. This plunder in the pursuit of accumulating more has little regard and no respect for any life as it proceeds to take resources under the guise that they are providing jobs for the unemployed and bettering the quality of life for the poor and the oppressed. This is especially true in cases of so called undeveloped countries. However, the reality being that the profits never trickles down to the poor as the rich get richer, the poor stay poor, or worse.
Let’s look at the difference between European and indigenous persons’ worldviews that reflect their own values. European worldviews are founded on patriarchy entrenched through hierarchical systems where white men focused on exclusivity, domination, stratification of society, consumerism, retributive justice, defined boundaries, individual rights and individualism. Indigenous peoples’ worldviews were based on collective rights, inclusiveness, egalitarianism, over lapping spheres of resources, accommodating rights, respecting nature, restorative justice and partnership.
Clearly humanity manifests richness of human cultures and worldviews. It is also very apparent that hegemonic cultures and worldviews continue to impose a universalized worldview through force, imposition, domination, and manipulation. All struggling people need to ask how to liberate and elevate their own disappearing cultures and oppressed worldviews!
