How Our Worldview Affects Everyday Life: Part 2

So, how does our worldview affect us on a daily basis? What happens when our worldview clashes with reality?

Let's say we have a concern about war and general upheaval in the world. How would we approach the problem? (And it has little to do with what we believe about war.) It depends on what we believe about the nature of the problem. Do we have a role at all? Is the problem someone else's responsibility? How does it fit our worldview?

If we approach this dilemma by saying that the primary problem is man's inability to get along with others, then we might conclude that solving these problems is hopeless, because it is our nature to be combative. This even includes people who don't like it to be that way. (Contradiction.) Therefore, the duty of man is to fight for his own survival.

But many of us understand that the natural outcome of this viewpoint is not preferable to our comfortable lifestyles. (Reality.) The situation still seems intolerable. Then our beliefs can either lead to throwing up our hands and letting things go on as usual, or working to bring peace into the world by associating man's need for survival with the succession of hostilities. "If we can only bring peace, man can survive."

How This Worldview Works

In the beginning there was eternal nature. All that exists came from a self-existent, universal, natural matter. Man's existence into this eternal presence was a product of this eternal matter or nature. But man is, by nature, at war with nature. (Contradiction.) He must be this way in order to survive. But this very desire has a consequence: it affects man's very existence itself. So man must rise above his nature in order to bring about a new era of peaceful coexistence with eternal nature. (Utopia or Paradise.)

How does man do this? (Enter in all sorts of theories and philosophies describing how we rise above ourselves.) All solutions to this dilemma are attempting to do everything possible to ensure that man is happy and fulfilled in this life, so that he will not see the need to war. We care for the environment. We demand, through force, peace. We see that power resides in the masses, instead of the few. We create governmental and economic structures to ensure that no one need not envy another's wealth. We must make everyone happy.

But then reality hits again. Some people are not satisfied, no matter what you give them. They have their own worldview solutions. They believe that in order to survive, there needs to be a certain number of people on the earth, and that they all should look like them. So, they make war to ensure that this happens. It is survival of the fittest, and they are fit to survive. So there is conflict. What is the solution? Try harder.