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Monday, May 24, 2021

World View of the United States

OK - assuming anyone is still reading these things - I just stumbled on a bit of research that I found fascinating. Not helpful at all, but fascinating.  This is my attempt to understand it a bit, and make it my own. It might help you to do the same. Or NOT. Let me know if this works. Thanks.

World View

I first glommed onto the idea of a "world view" in East Africa. Thanks to my good friends who had spent many years there, I discovered that East Africans see all of life very differently from most westerners. To state it very simplistically, I see life as something that I am in charge of. They see life as something that happens TO them. It was hard for me to believe that - but it is true. 
For a simple introduction to that, see this blog post.

Until that point, I assumed that we all had the same mental model in our heads of how things work. In fact, our mental models are very different. Each country has kind of a dominant one, and individuals have uniquely personal ones. And these models are not simple things - they are complex beasts. And they are fundamental to how our brain works - not things pasted on later. It took me a couple of decades to see this. You can think of "world view" also as "culture", where culture means the whole underpinning of beliefs and feelings that make up the mental model of your world. This is your personal "story", which shapes everything you see and think.

This "culture" or "world view" is really the infrastructure of your mind or brain as it tries to make sense of the input it gets. These are learned behaviors, learned emotions, learned feelings, which you started acquiring as an infant. You learned that the odd grimace which you gave your parents seemed to make them quite happy - so you learned to smile. All the things you think of as rational ideas, arguments, thoughts, are really learned emotional responses that your body has acquired over many years to govern how you operate.  For the most part, these are totally automatic - they are FEELINGS, not ideas, not rules for life, not morals, etc. 

Neuroscience

I want to emphasize that this is not just my opinion - this is what modern neuroscience has finally figured out. It is what Kahneman calls the "fast brain". It is what Lisa Feldman calls our "constructed emotions." We believe that we think, that we reason - but that is rarely what is going on. We can think, or reason, but it is rare, and a whole lot of work. It is Kahneman's "slow brain". For the most part, we feel, we have emotions, we have nearly automatic responses to perceived reality, that we are barely in charge of. These learned emotions, feelings are formed all through our life. They are our world view - our personal cultural perspective on life.
For more on that than you probably ever wanted to know, see this blog post.

Survey of American World View

This is the article that started this thought process:
https://www.christianpost.com/news/millennials-dont-know-dont-care-dont-believe-god-exists.html.

When I saw the title for this, I thought it might be interesting. The headline reads: "43% of millennials 'don’t know, don’t care, don’t believe' God exists:" In my humble opinion, about 1/3 of the U.S. population is slightly crazy, so I thought an objective survey of our belief system might help explain things. 

The survey is really focused on the "religious" or "philosophy of life" world view of the United States. I found the first article quite confusing. So I looked to the original study organization, and found 3 more versions of PR pieces. You can get them all under the heading: American Worldview Inventory 2021 Releases. They all download a PDF, so be prepared for that. 
https://www.arizonachristian.edu/culturalresearchcenter/research/

This is a Christian organization, trying to determine the belief levels of the U.S. population. I can safely say that they were surprised by what they learned. ". . . this radical spiritual revolution has created a generation seeking a reimagined world without God, the Bible, or churches . . ."

The survey technique was decent - they did 30 minute interviews with the subjects. Casting the belief system of their subjects as their "world view" was a fairly insightful. I am not sure they fully realized this, but it works. 

Syncretism

AND . . . I learned a new word: "Syncretism" as a "world view."  AND 88% of us have it!  What the heck is it? 

The most common worldview among Americans is Syncretism, which isn’t a true worldview but rather a collection of disparate worldview elements blended into a customized philosophy of life.

Here are some relevant quotes:

Only 6% of American adults possess a biblical worldview, but what have the other 94% put in its place?

One of the shocking outcomes from the research is that the biblical worldview, at a 6% nationwide incidence, was the most prolific of the seven worldviews tested. However, with 94% of Americans essentially rejecting the biblical worldview as their preferred way to think and live, placing first in a race in which few people crossed the finish line is hardly a victory. 

In total, 88% of Americans have Syncretism, rather than a substantively coherent and recognizable worldview such as postmodernism or secular humanism, as their dominant worldview. A large majority of each generation relies on a syncretistic worldview when making their life choices. Overall, 89% of Millennials, 86% of Gen Xers, 83% of Boomers, and 86% of Builders have a syncretistic worldview (see CRC’s report on Syncretism here).

According to the groundbreaking American Worldview Inventory 2021—the first survey of its kind to measure not only biblical worldview, but six prominent competing worldviews—found that the overwhelming majority of American adults lack a cohesive, coherent worldview, and instead substitute a patchwork of conflicting, often irreconcilable beliefs and values as they navigate life.

I honestly don't know if that is good news or bad news. Biblical be gone in terms of a literal reading of the Christian scriptures is fine with me. But replacing it with nothing, or something called Syncretism, sounds scary. They list the "known" consistent world views as the following 7:  (always 7)

". . . the seven worldviews measured—Biblical Theism (or a biblical worldview), Secular Humanism, Postmodernism, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, Nihilism, Marxism (along with its offshoot, Critical Race Theory) and Eastern Mysticism (also known as “New Age”), . . . "

They think Catholics fall into this one: Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.  Deism, yet. Well, . . . . could be worse - maybe! It's like 39% of the country.

Bottom Line - to save you a bit of time, here's the "DUH" bottom line of this research:

"Our studies show that Americans are neither deep nor sophisticated thinkers,” the veteran researcher noted. “Americans have become selfish and emotion-driven, leaving logic behind. To promote a way of life that pushes us to think more clearly, consistently, and purposefully will take time and effort, and will be uncomfortable. Most people seem more interested in living a life of comfort and convenience than one of logical consistency and wisdom. Our children will continue to suffer the consequences of following in the unfortunate footsteps of their parents and elders. People who are willing to fight for a more reasonable way of thinking and acting can make a difference but it will be slow progress.”

Well, I wish them well - but to say that a biblical world view is a more reasonable way of thinking is pretty strange. It is obvious that they are part of the problem, not the solution. The genius here is to recognize that we simply are NOT rational - and let go of that. We are feeling beasts - with an occasional rational episode. A consistent world view is the construct of the organization that took the survey. It is simply not real. Their sense of "world view" is really a coherent set of religious beliefs or philosophy. What their survey learned is that humans have broken free of that old model. We are no longer all under the sway of our mind controlling religious beliefs. Rather, we are now an eclectic gathering of discordant values. I think we all have a different term for this: "secularism". These good folk are not privy to that, unfortunately. 

I think the ultimate answer here is to come up with a "world view" or philosophy that we can teach people from infancy onward, that provides a coherent context that better supports human development, and not the concerns of a deity. 

Here is the chart of the results: