Chapter 3

1. Chapter 3 Worldview: Cultural Explanations of Life and Death

2. Importance of Worldview A culture's worldview helps its members make sense out of reality. It is "the collective body of ideas that members of a culture generally share concerning the ultimate shape and substance of their reality.�

3. Worldview is an �inside view of the way things are colored, shaped, and arranged according to cultural preconceptions.� �Every social group has a worldview�a set of more or less systematized beliefs and values in terms of which the group evaluates and attaches meaning to the reality that surrounds it.�

4. Just as culture is automatic and unconscious, so is worldview. �Often, worldviews operate at an unconscious level, so that we are not even aware that other ways of seeing the world are either possible or legitimate. Like the air we breathe, worldviews are a vital part of who we are but not a part we usually think much about.�

5. �Worldview provides some of the unexamined underpinnings for perception and the nature of reality as experienced by individuals who share a common culture. The worldview of a culture functions to make sense of life experiences that might otherwise be construed as chaotic, random, and meaningless. Worldview is imposed by collective wisdom as a basis for sanctioned actions that enable survival and adaptation.

6. Manifestations of Worldview Worldview is the basic foundation of both cosmic issues revolving about the nature of reality at the same time it governs life in small ways. A culture�s woldview even influences the social, economic, and political life of a nation.

7. Worldview is a culture's orientation toward God, humanity, nature, questions of existence, the universe and cosmos, life, moral and ethical reasoning, suffering, death, and other philosophical issues that influence how its members perceive their world.

8. �If one understands a culture�s worldview and cosmology, reasonable accuracy can be attained in predicting behaviors and motivations in other dimensions.

9. Muslims view women as lower-class than men. �Generally speaking, woman as an individual was subordinated to man both by the Quran and the Hadith. God created woman from a fragment of man�s body that she might serve him.�

10. Native Americans live in harmony with nature.

11. Many environmentalists don�t believe in the biblical tradition of God telling man to be masters over the earth. They believe that it promotes a worldview toward nature that may encourage a disregard for the environment.

12. Shintoists view nature as aesthetically pleasing and necessary to a full life. The focus is on reality, not heaven. Nature is supreme. Every hill, every river, every tree, is precious. Shintoists believe they are lasting things among which their ancestors lived and died, so their ancestors still look on from nature. Therefore, Shintoists preserve nature in order to preserve life.

13. Ask any Tibetan or Navajo about one�s place in the scheme of things and the answer will inevitably be that we must act, speak, and think respectfully and reasonably toward others. Navajo�s say that we are all people: earth-surface walkers, swimmers, crawlers, flyers, and sky and water people. Tibetans know that we are humans, animals, worldly gods and demi-gods, ghosts and hell beings, and a host of aboriginal earth powers. Regardless of category or description, we�re all inextricably connected through a system of actions and their effects, which can go according to cosmic order or fall out of synchrony with it.

14. What are some aspects of the Taiwanese worldview? How about the Buddhist worldview? What are some aspects of the American worldview? How about other cultures?

15. 3 Types of Worldview Scientific Metaphysical Religious