Does World View Directly Impact the World?

[Rift Zone]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

I think it’s highly likely that world views impact societies. Compare France (highly secular) with Saudi Arabia (decidedly not).

Boru

[Paleophyte]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

[Alan V]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

If our worldviews aren't realistic, then we keep bumping into inconvenient realities to our own detriment.  

It happens all the time these days.  Climate change is perhaps the biggest example, but Trump's second term is all about denialism in various forms.

[Belacqua]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

I think people's world views determine pretty much everything in the human world -- culture, tradition, politics, the built environment. All of society.

We are trained from birth to see things in certain ways. Some of the training goes so deep that we aren't even aware there are alternatives. So when we make any kind of choice -- our lifestyle, our buildings, etc.etc. -- our views form those choices.

We can also talk about different levels of what we might call a world view. It's more than just politics. Anything that appears to your conscious mind has been filtered and interpreted already by the way you view things, and these interpretations are partly learned. (Just exactly to what degree they are learned, and how much they are common to every member of the same species is debatable.) But by the time you've gotten to the point where you can say, "Look, there's a cat," your mind has already separated the animal from its background, identified what kind of thing it is, and in part chosen how you're going to react to it. There are no "raw" experiences which don't pass through mental interpretations. 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

This is really difficult, because to see how things might differ, we have to look at very different cultures, removed from us in either time or space. But it's very natural for us to interpret those different cultures through our own habits. So the extreme strangeness of what it would be like to live in, say, ancient Greece, tends to be smoothed out. And of course our media products assist with this normalization -- in a movie about ancient Greece the actors are all going to be speaking English and wearing haircuts that are popular at the moment in California and thinking pretty much like modern Americans. 

I mean, Star Trek is fun if you think of the encounters with all those alien cultures as little morality plays, which are actually commenting on modern US society. But as speculation about actual aliens it's seriously lacking in imagination. 

As for how a fundamentally secular society differs from one that developed with religion, that's impossible to know. We'd have to engage in some counter-factual speculation, which is fun but of course completely unprovable. Like it or not, our culture was very religious for a long time, so the values that we still have evolved through that religion. How much of the religious influence remains, even in the absence of religious belief, is the subject of serious study. 

Even the most un-religious cultures in the modern world (maybe China?) developed through the medium of religion. (Especially if you count Confucianism as a religion.)

[Simon Moon]

I think Voltaire said it pretty succinctly.

"Those that can get you to believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

[Mr Greene]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

Within secularism is the subset of the scientific method which fundamentally questions everything.
This is directly opposed to the doctrine of unquestioning faith and deference to authority common certainly to monotheism.
In Europe we have our own history describing the profound difference in viewpoint between now and the Dark Ages which are near incomprehensible from our own perspective.

[Forever Sophist]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

Does world view impact the world? Yes and no, I believe that first the world is separate from one's view of it. The worldview is our construction (a useful fiction) of the world around us.

What you're asking seems to be how people with different world views act or form societies. That does lead to differences. Big ones, which is why you find people fighting for their worldviews.

Think of the effect a domino has on a stacked row of dominoes. You can see this with world views too.

• Christian worldview -> Follow the teachings of your church -> One such teaching is that being gay is wrong -> condemn gay people, fight against their rights, etc.
  
• Secular worldview -> Follow empirical evidence -> Being gay is not a moral issue and is a natural thing in the world -> Allow gay people their rights
  

I just arbitrarily pulled out one large issue, but really this has a ripple effect on every single view ever.

While the worldview does not impact the world itself, it impacts us, and how we build our society a top the world.

[Thumpalumpacus]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

Does world view impact the world? Yes and no, I believe that first the world is separate from one's view of it. The worldview is our construction (a useful fiction) of the world around us.

What you're asking seems to be how people with different world views act or form societies. That does lead to differences. Big ones, which is why you find people fighting for their worldviews.

Think of the effect a domino has on a stacked row of dominoes. You can see this with world views too.

• Christian worldview -> Follow the teachings of your church -> One such teaching is that being gay is wrong -> condemn gay people, fight against their rights, etc.
  
• Secular worldview -> Follow empirical evidence -> Being gay is not a moral issue and is a natural thing in the world -> Allow gay people their rights
  

I just arbitrarily pulled out one large issue, but really this has a ripple effect on every single view ever.

While the worldview does not impact the world itself, it impacts us, and how we build our society a top the world.

Really thoughtful. We can't really change the world on our own, but by explicating our world-views, we can forge bonds, establish messages, and find support.

[Ahriman]

What is the relationship there?   is it a simple matter of world view defines operating parameters and operating within those parameters is bound to leave tangible consequences?   Is it more involved than that?   is there any correlation at all? 

And if so, to what degree, where?   Like, how would a fundamentally secular society differ from ones that developed with say, Christianity or Islam or something?

I think it’s highly likely that world views impact societies. Compare France (highly secular) with Saudi Arabia (decidedly not).

Boru

If I hired some French dudes and some Saudi Arabian dudes to build a house, the Saudi Arabian dudes would be diligently working the whole time, and wouldn't even stop to drink beer, while the French dudes would be smoking cigarettes and laughing at the Saudi Arabian dudes for working so hard. Just saying.