CHAPTER 7
Worldviews: values, beliefs, ethics
Engaging with sustainable development in a worldview setting has collective and individual aspects. Both have ethical components and require reflection on one’s needs, values and beliefs. As Russell (1954) said: ‘Ethics is rooted in the necessity to reconcile the entirely individual desire with that which is collectively desirable ’.
- Values are expressed in statements about what is (un)desirable; beliefs are statements about how the world is thought or imagined to be. The corners in worldview space can be associated with particular values and beliefs via historical accounts and surveys;
- For values, it translates notably into self-enhancement versus self-transcendence and openness to change (or progressivism) versus conservation (or traditionalism). As to beliefs, it is recognized in different positions regarding the place of humans in Nature, the roots of good and evil, the role of human ingenuity, the balance between individual and collective and between coordination and competition;
- Ethical reflections are an important ingredient in the sustainability discourse, with complex linkages to values and beliefs. Different ideas about good and evil have developed in different cultures, from universal biological roots. The ethical theories and positions of the Industrial Era and Enlightenment have met with criticism from various corners (§5.3). New schools have emerged, partly based on earlier traditions and more adequate in the Anthropocene;
- Virtue ethics rejects utility and human rights as fictions and instead emphasizes the uniqueness of individual live-histories and the importance of intrinsic goods and practicing virtue in community. Development and ecospiritual ethics emphasize the importance of a balance between individual and collective and about humans and other living beings. Both can also be assigned a place in worldview space;
- At the personal level, the search for the integral worldviewis a journey through worldview space towards the center, that is, the place where the individual can find harmony and, at higher levels of consciousness, transcend individual self. It can be found from each corner.
Test your understanding of this chapter by reviewing the study questions below.
All Materials Relevant to this Chapter
Decision Making in Politics
Can you please stop telling me 'all people are different'? A textbook on sustainable development should address public decision making and politics. Politics can be described as the area in society where issues transcending mere [...]
Identifying and measuring beliefs: two case-studies
An analysis of the outcomes of the World Value Survey (§4.2) over the period 1989-2004 has been used to identify popular support for the transition to a market economy in India and China (Migheli 2010). [...]
Social dynamics in Cultural Theory
Cultural Theory interprets social-cultural change as a continuous, dynamic interplay between the adherents of the four perspectives (Thompson 1992, 1997; Vries 2023). Individuals alter their perspective when it is no longer reconcilable with their experience. [...]
Energy: the Colosseum, slaves and containerships
The energy needed to deliver energy has always been a concern for societies. ‘All our societies require enormous flows of high-quality energy just to sustain, let alone raise, their complexity and order (to keep themselves [...]
Putting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into perspective: the worldview approach
[see also this link here.] Global Sustainability 27 september 2019 (e18). The seven-plus billion human beings on the planet are increasingly connected through material and informational exchanges. Their everyday behaviour and their desires, emotions, aspirations [...]
The lure of flying – and the flyprint
Living on a plane. "Ana-Maria P. is the president of Powerstorm, a US company working on sustainable telecom solutions focused on reducing CO2 emissions in emerging markets. How often do you travel? I basically live [...]
Meat in Europe: a worldview assessment
The consumption of meat is increasingly becoming controversial as a spectrum of activists point at the negative side-effects for animal welfare, human health, local pollution and climate change inducing greenhousegas emissions. The meat industry and [...]
Top-down or bottom-up, that is the question?
Every now and then I meet friends who have given up on changing the world: “It is too complex, too violent, too far away, and I feel powerless in the face of it. So I [...]
Sustainability and solidarity: recipes from a political scientist
Reading the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were agreed upon by the United Nations in 2015 in the document Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (sustainabledevelopment.un.org), I am struck by the high [...]