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1.0 Describing WvS
WvS Theory Basics

Then one day, a hunting party discovers a group of strange people on the border of the tribal lands.  These people don't look like the tribe, and they speak can't speak the language of the people.  At first, the tribe is curious and many people come to see these new visitors.  However, it soon becomes apparent that these people take without asking and have no understanding of what might offend the spirits.  Conflict breaks out and a council is called.  The men decide that the medicine man should use his magic to make these strangers go away.  The next day, when the medicine man approaches the stranger's camp, a fight ensues and the shaman is killed.

It is clear that there is no other path: the tribe must go to war.  They have fought their enemies before, but this enemy is much more dangerous than any other before.  They call the men of the village together and form a party to fight these invaders.

At first the battle does not go well.  The warriors advance as a group as they have always done before.  However, their enemy is highly organized and quickly responds to the attack.  Many of the older men of the tribe fall as the warriors retreat to the cover of the forest.  Among the remaining warriors there is much talk of going home.  Most don't believe they can overcome this enemy.  Then, a few of the young men stand up.  They rebuke those who are cowardly and they encourage the rest to follow them back into the battle.  These few leading warriors organize the men into groups.  The devise a clever plan to trick the enemy.

When they return to the battlefield, things go very differently.  Their tricky strategy confuses the enemy and a few of the groups break through the ranks.  The enemy, realizing their defeat, runs off and leaves the tribal lands.

When the young men return, they are quite different.  They neither fear the spirits nor care to follow the old ways.  They do not share the booty from the battle because they say they earned it, and the cowards who deserted and came home did not.  When the elders approach them about their behavior, the young men point out that the spirits and the old ways did not save them from their enemies.  The elders, enraged by this shameful talk, order the young men to mend their ways or leave.  The young men say that if they leave the people will regret it since there will be no one to defend the tribe in case these enemies return.  The people of the village seem to know this is true and the elders realize they cannot expel the warriors, though they have serious worries about what this will mean about the future and their way of life. 

This tribe has experienced a change in worldview.  The tribe may have lived for thousands of years and hundreds of generations with no real change of lifestyle and no need for a different strategy.  Only when their problem of existence became more complex then their current worldview did they change their mindset.  Their existence problem transitioned from a need to control unseen spiritual forces to the need to defend themselves from invaders.  Magic couldn't make this problem go away.  Also, the group/consensus style of leadership was ineffective on the battle field.  This required warrior-leaders to arise from the people and lead them to victory based on their own power and know-how -- not based on the old ways or by magic.

This process has repeated itself over and over again in human history.  Each time a society faces a "new" existence problem, it will invariably change its way of looking at the world in order to overcome it.  Take an example from a page of American history:

Long before the Americas were colonized, warrior-leaders rose to lead the tribes of Europe.  These chieftains  became kings and their people became nations.  These kings were responsible for the defense of their lands and, in turn, the peasant populace served and supported the nobility.  Tyranny became the new problem of existence, however, as kings exercised their unlimited rights on the powerless masses.  As the populace climbed out of the feudal ages and a new class of wealthy non-nobility emerged, a new worldview based on personal and corporate rights and government by social contract emerged.  It would be this mindset that would lead thirteen colonies on the the shore of a great wilderness to reject their king and set up a government "for the people, by the people."

Social scientists have now isolated seven distinct worldviews in use by portions of humanity today, with an eighth worldview currently emerging on the scene.¹  Each of these worldviews has developed in response to problems too complex for old ways of looking at the world.  Since a worldview is totally functional until a more complex problem occurs, each worldview can be considered valid and effective in its particular environment.  Therefore, more complex worldviews are not superior, they are merely more complex.  They too are only functional in their corresponding environment.

To illustrate this point, consider the tribe described above.  The final strategy of the story was the emergence of warrior-leaders and the transition out of mysticism and consensus leadership.  Although this solution was more complex than its predecessor, imagine what would happen if it emerged before the problem posed itself and the environment changed.  Suppose several young men of the village had simply stood up one day and said, "we are now the sole leaders, you must follow us."  Without the situation caused by the battle with the enemy, these young men would find themselves quickly banished.  Their worldview would not be functional in the tribal environment -- in the tribe's pre-war world there was no need for this kind of thinking.

Because of this principle, a worldview is not inferior to any other worldview so long as it exists in its effective realm.  Often thinkers are labeled as "ahead of their time" because they propose a worldview that is not yet functional in their environment.  The early emergence of this mindset leads it to be discredited among its contemporaries because it does not work in the current system.  However, when a transition caused by more complex problems does occur, this thinker's ideas gain new meaning and relevance.

The formation of new worldviews is not only expressed in society; it is a part of human development.²  As people mature, their awareness, self-perception, and existential problems change, forcing evolution in the way they view the cosmos.  For example: in early childhood we develop strong bonds with family members.  Our identity and safety are based on the group.  Mother and father are our protection from a world of unknown forces.  This worldview is very similar to the mindset of the pre-war tribe described above.  However, as children mature they begin to reach the boundaries of the family and see there is much more of the world to explore and know.  Soon, individual children will rise to the top and lead others out to discover the world.  Often groups of younger children will follow a slightly bigger, braver, or older child.  Competitive play is used to establish rank and identify leaders among the group.  This is very similar to the ending mindset the post-war tribe developed.

1.1 Defining Worldview

The above example illustrates worldview in a single context or a environment.  The worldview of any of the individuals or groups mentioned above is much more complex than one example can reveal.  In fact, the complexity of elements that make up an individual or group's worldview are so complex a definition is fairly difficult.  This is also complicated by the various modern usages of the term.  Simplistically, worldview is the mental set of how a person or group perceives their environment.³

More specifically, a worldview is composed of four or five components: self-perception, other-perception, world perception, spiritual perception, and worldview products.  In come cases, spiritual perception and world perception may be combined -- thus the variance between four or five components.  This is especially true in worldviews where the spiritual realm is seen as highly materialistic or animistic. 

The last component, worldview products, refers to anything produced by, defined by, or altered by the worldview such as behavior, culture, mores, values, conventional wisdom, etc.  These products are part of the worldview in the sense that they maintain and perpetuate the worldview and that they have roles specific to the worldview.  For example: a medicine man's charm (material culture) is a product of his worldview that physical things, given they have certain properties, can control the spiritual world.  Outside of his worldview, in the context of other "modern" worldviews, the charm may have only novelty value.  The fact that the charm changes from one worldview to the next demonstrates that, as a worldview product, its nature is part of worldview.

Every worldview requires a sense of "self."  Without self, there is no context for worldview.  Self-perception has to do with how one sees oneself and not how one really is.  For example: if an individual thinks they are capable of nothing, they will probably fail at whatever they attempt.  Even if they are physically and mentally gifted, the self image in their worldview will not allow success.  In some worldviews, if an individual thinks a curse has been placed on him/her, he/she may actually grow sick and die even though there is no physiological cause to the illness.  This person see himself as under the power of invisible spirits capable of taking his life, therefore the curse has real power.

The term "other-perception" refers to anyone outside "self".  In group-oriented worldview this would be the perception of society in general or groups specifically.  However, individualistic worldviews may not see "others" in the contexts of groups.  Even in group situations they may identify only individuals or they may define a group as simply an aggregate of individuals with little or no solidarity.

World perception is usually more concerned with "how things work" (active) rather than "how things are" (passive).  Usually this concept defines the source of the survival problem and how reality (or perceived reality) requires a certain remedy.  Often "self" and "others" are included in this perception as part of the larger environment.  However in this arena others are often seen as more impersonal and part of the individual's environment.

The spiritual elements of a worldview may belong to their own category of perception.  This may include thoughts about spiritual beings, the after life, deity, and include morals and religious traditions.  In some worldviews, this is closely related to the world perception.  In other, especially individualistic worldviews that tend to compartmentalize, it may be seen as totally separate from the world perception.

1.2 Characteristics of Worldview Development

Worldview development in the personal and social contexts exhibits the following characteristics:

• Existential problems are the synthesis for worldviews.  Actually, it is perceived existential problems that catalyze worldviews -- the problem may or may not be real.  Based on the currently perceived resources, individuals and societies develop a strategy to solve their existential problem.  The problem, strategy, and perceived resources combine to form the component aspects and conceptual environment for the worldview. 
• Because each worldview perceives the world in a specific way, it generates and perpetuates its own modes of behavior that make sense in the context.  In some cases worldviews develop in a context that is so specific, even worldview of a similar type will not share sufficient behaviors to facilitate communication and interaction.
• Worldviews are models and metaphors for dealing with the incomprehensible whole of reality.  As models, they are a incomplete representation only and lack certain qualities of reality as a whole.  Since, like a model, worldviews are a perceptional tool, people "use" a worldview more than they "are" a worldview.  Also, because human worldviews are not complete representations of reality they are all inherently flawed and insufficient solutions.  They may achieve stability for periods of time, but this requires certain assumptions that some real problems do not exist or are universal or inescapable.    
• Judgment of worldviews should only be considered as to functionality.  A worldview can be considered functional until it no longer adequately answers the current existence problem.  Because of this, more complex or modern worldviews are not superior, and less complex or more primitive worldviews are not inferior.  Each worldview has its place according to environment.  
• Since any particular worldview is adopted in direct reaction to a former worldview that was insufficient for the problem at hand, worldviews tend to be polarized.  For example: if a group-oriented strategy fails, an individually-oriented strategy will be chosen to replace it.  A pendulum effect results and mindsets often view the world at the extremes of a spectrum.
• While one worldview will usually dominate a person's psychology or a social group, it is often combined with aspects of other worldviews that do not highly conflict with the dominant.  Also, the transition between worldviews is often more gradual than abrupt.  This means that, at any given time, it is more likely to find an individual or society somewhere in the process of transition that in the extreme of a single worldview. 
• Individuals and societies collect and keep concepts and behaviors from worldviews they have since transitioned out of.  This "toolbox" is utilized when the dominant worldview cannot deal with a particular problem or aspect of a compound problem as well as an earlier worldview.  In such a case, a "tool" from an earlier mindset is employed.
• The inadequacies of a failing worldview usually indicate that the existential problem is more complex than first suspected.  Therefore, the next worldview by necessity is more complex.  However, this complexity may or may not include an accurate understanding of previous existence problems.  In fact, personally or socially vital behaviors and institutions may be forgotten to the detriment of the worldview user(s).  For example: a computer analyst, although his worldview is highly-complex, may have little conception of primitive hunting skills.  Should he become lost in a wilderness area, he may perish quickly where a tribesman would have no problem acquiring food or shelter -- skills specifically related to his worldview.
• While individuals and societies usually progress towards more complex worldviews, it is possible for the opposite to occur.  Such reverse progression is called a "downshift."⁴ Usually such a transition is stress related or due to some form of collapse in psychology or society.  Sometimes a worldview so identifies with components of an earlier worldview that idealizes that worldview.  Although it may long for "simplier times" it improbable that the worldview could successfully cast off its complex perception and adopt a simpler one.

The existence of these worldviews at both social and personal levels demands that sociological and psychological science understands the outlooks, communication styles, and behaviors of these thinking systems.  This is the heart of Worldview Systems (WvS) Theory.  WvS is founded on the principle that effective people work must be approach humans on the basis of how they view the world.  "One size fits all" is not an effective strategy in politics, counseling, or even evangelism.   

Next: Overview of the WvS Spectrum >>

¹Eight worldviews have been identified in the research of the late Clare W. Graves, Professor Emeritus at Union College in NY.  Since, the theory has been used in a variety of applications such as Michael C. Armor and Don Browning's Systems Sensitive Leadership (SSL): Empowering Diversity without Polarizing the Church (Joplin: College Press, 2000).  WvS is closely related to SSL and relies heavily on the descriptions developed by Armor & Browning. [back to text]

² Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson defined "Eight Ages of Man" which are very similar to Grave's worldviews as expressed in individuals: Trust vs. Mistrust, Autonomy vs. Doubt, Initiative vs. Guilt, Industry vs. Inferiority, Identity vs. Role Confusion, Intimacy vs. Isolation, Generativity vs. Self-absorption, and Integrity vs. Despair.  Source: David Elkind, "Erik Erikson's Eight Ages Of Man: One man in his time plays many psychological parts," Annual Editions Readings in Sociology '73/'74, Phillip Whitten, publisher (Guilford, CT: Annual Editions, Dushkin Publishing Group, 1973), 38-50. [back to text]

³Paul G. Hiebert, Anthropological Insights for Missionaries (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), 45. [back to text]

⁴Michael C. Armor and Don Browning use this term in Systems Sensitive Leadership (SSL): Empowering Diversity without Polarizing the Church (Joplin: College Press, 2000). [back to text]