When you have a worldview, it all fits together

Scott:

June 30th, 2012 at 9:52 pm

As Sun-Tzu said:
It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle.  

larrydunbar:

July 1st, 2012 at 1:32 am

But why fight a hundred battles? It seems like Sun-Tzu could use some Optimization. 
 

Curtis Gale Weeks:

July 1st, 2012 at 5:08 am

Larry:  Hah!
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The problem w/ “worldview” in general is the fact that it is complete.  In some old diagrams of OODA, my own concoction to make the OODA useful in understanding consciousness (generally speaking), I used a pentagon to designate the objective, material “World” and a pentagon inside the abstract OODA to designate the Worldview (generally speaking, though I called it “Mental Constructs.”)  The objective worlds has many gaps, blank places; first, there are some aspects of the world no one observes; but also there are individual gaps that individuals do not see because they haven’t observed it though others might have.  But for the Mental Constructs of each person—sake of argument, call it Worldview—I showed no gaps.   The Worldview is complete, whole; but, not if you compare it to the objective world.

Charles Cameron:

July 1st, 2012 at 6:04 am

No gaps, I would generally agree, Curtis, though there are exceptions, eg: the anomalies that eventually topple an established paradigm per Kuhn; the “spirit trail” left by Navajo weavers to escape a patterned regularity that would otherwise imprison them — and wabi, marked by the “quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to the object” in zen-bathed Japanese aesthetics.
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The people who devised and work within each of these systems knew and know the importance of, shall we say, loosening the conceptual tie and rolling up their sleeves..

Curtis Gale Weeks:

July 1st, 2012 at 6:31 am

Not familiar with those.
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I think the worldview is often changing, although the changes are ever so slight most of the time.  Maybe this is why it is possible to remember how one was as a youth and see that person as being quite different than one’s older self, almost a second person.   Cumulative change will eventually produce great change in relation to much earlier states.  New observations alter the present worldview, the new worldview is still whole just changed, but these alterations are often so minuscule that we tend to not notice them at the time.  (If ever, in some cases.)
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I would say that no two people share exactly the same worldview.
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For the longest time now, I’ve been trying to conceptualized the mind in terms of strange attractors a la chaos theory. With any introduction of data into the system, the whole system changes, the “strange attractor” changes.  Many of the constituent parts remain (in this case, perhaps, memories, even those we can’t bring to consciousness), but the system as a whole is a new thing in comparison to any previous whole of the system.  The difference might not be noticeable at all times, of course, and I would say that it generally is not except when comparing much earlier states to later states.  An added fold might consider earlier states as themselves still being present, but relegated to being “parts” of the later whole whereas before they were the whole.
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Of course, I’m approaching the idea of “worldview” a little differently than the typical use.  Typically, even though it might be admitted to be vague, people might describe it in terms of a handful of markers:   like religion, philosophy, political opinions, social opinions, aesthetics, etc.
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I’m reminded by your comment of something Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “Every spirit makes its house; but afterwards the house confines the spirit.”   My own opinion is that the house is never finished being built—although there may be innate limitations that prohibit some alterations while guiding others.  But are there limitations to those limitations?  I would guess, yes.

Madhu:

July 6th, 2012 at 12:42 pm

Lovely poem.
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I’m glad you post them from time to time.
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the traveling downpour, drenching I like this because it becomes a million pictures in my mind, immediately. I have images of the midwest plains where I grew up in my head and the sky always mattered. The sky was more real than the land, sometimes.
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I’m sorry I haven’t been reading or commenting much lately. You are impossible to keep up with, you post so much! 🙂 Not complaining, observing.
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Anyway, I am tending an online garden of my own at the moment and reading papers for the tending….
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http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showthread.php?t=15993
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So, your stuff on identity as legitimacy is interesting and pertinent to the thread!