The Vulnerability in Your Worldview

With the hyper-embrace of Artificial Intelligence, to the climate change renaming of cities, to the unchecked powers sending agents to scoop up people off the streets—humans are meeting revised forms of exploitation that continue to expose vulnerabilities.

When I think of how vulnerable humanity is in our current era, my focus within Western culture is on the knowledge and wisdom gap that affects our behaviors and actions. The gap, unconsciously curated over centuries, has been an assault on our hearts and minds.

• What takes its attention away from your intention?

• What hijacks your thinking?

• How easily (or quickly) is propaganda able to change your behaviors?

• Change what you like? Who you like?

• Who you put your trust in?

This exploitation is not only within the context of society; it’s within each individual. What is happening around us is truly part of our reality and it is also a metaphor—if you choose to brave the challenge to let it reveal itself to you.

The chaos, in my view, is an invitation to tend to our underdeveloped parts. These parts within each of us that are the most vulnerable to exploitation—whether online or in the streets or in our families or at work. They are the parts of ourselves that perhaps beg for your awareness. These parts sometimes hide in our beliefs—the foundation of your individual worldview or weltanschauung. And unless we cultivate this awareness, these beliefs can otherwise subject you to their vulnerabilities.

Do you know your worldview? What about your worldview’s vulnerabilities?

In Western culture, people harbor beliefs that once bundled together generally fall into one of four Western worldviews: Traditional, Post Modern, Modern, and Integrative. I won’t discuss a fifth, compelling worldview here, but you can learn more about it in this free class, Your Worldview Compass, that comes with free resources to help you dive deeper on this topic. Across the globe there are other worldviews, cosmologies, and cosmovisions that are embedded within other frameworks with which to view the world.

When you dissect your own worldview (or other frameworks of your beliefs), you’ll meet your conscious and unconscious beliefs. These beliefs may overlap with one or more other worldviews. Meaning that you might not be a pure Traditionalist or Postmodernist, but perhaps a combination of the two (or three, or four).

From the bonus material in the UYW course, I share the full version of the worldview vulnerabilities chart. I don’t mention the beliefs of each worldview below, but in the chart you’ll directly see how those beliefs, if not brought to awareness, can usher you down a road you might not have intended to journey down.

Looking at your worldview’s vulnerabilities is not an invitation to be afraid. It’s an invitation to tend to your beliefs.

Because beliefs are the drivers that animate you across the span of your life. And you deserve to live a life aware—a life that is of your own, not one that aims to craft you into a carbon copy.

Western Culture Worldviews

Text from image: Traditional (top left quadrant): May be susceptible to: charismatic leaders; fall prey to those who exploit their sense of duty… PostModern (bottom left quadrant) May be susceptible to: those using relativism to justify harmful behaviors; manipulative narratives framed as fighting oppression; Modern (top right quadrant): May be susceptible to: promises of quick success; pseudoscientific claims… Integrative (bottom right quadrant): May be susceptible to: overoptimism; spiritual bypassing (using spirituality to avoid reality); pseudo-spirituality…