Worldviews

We do not describe the world we see; We see the world we describe. ~ Joseph Jaworski

 As a retired professor of sociology, this is one of the first things I tried to teach my students. The way we see and understand the world around us is filtered through our worldviews which, in turn, tend to be culture bound.

This can be a good thing in that worldviews help us filter and order an infinite amount of stimuli so that we can function on a daily basis. On the other hand, if our worldviews are too rigid, we can miss a lot of beautiful “sights” in the world because we are unwilling to consider new or differing perspectives.

Sometimes our inability to see things in new ways is simply because no one has ever questioned our assumptions. Years ago, I had a young woman in my class who was extremely bright and hard-working. She was in the nursing program. When I asked her why she had chosen nursing school instead of medical school, she was shocked that I thought she had the talent to be a doctor.

No one had ever suggested to her that she could be a doctor so it wasn’t part of her worldview. As a footnote, the last time I heard from her, she was a practicing doctor.