"Thought of the Week" for
Our worldview gives meaning and direction
...For most of us, a world view is a
lived truth, something we just take for granted and seldom try to
describe. Indeed, there is normally motivation to do so only if
something goes wrong, if in some way our world view is inadequate or
is changing. Only then do we become self-conscious about it.
If, at this personal level, one fails to
sense some coherent world view, then life itself fragments. We say
that such a person has "lost his sense of direction" or "doesn't
know who he is." The alienation suffered at this level is alienation
from the self.
Danah Zohar. (1990). The Quantum Self: Human nature and consciousness defined by the new physics. New York: William Morrow and Co.
Comment:
Our world view gives meaning and coherence to lifeitle
by Reg Harris
Copyright © 1998 by Reg Harris. All rights reserved. Updated February 2009. All rights reserved. Apart from properly cited quotes and short excerpts, no part of this article can be copied or used in any form without written permission from the author. For permission to use, please contact me.
For those of you interested in the connections
between quantum physics and human consciousness, The Quantum
Self is a clear and fascinating analysis.
In the quote above, Zohar hits on three
important elements of the Hero's Journey. In paragraph one, she
could be describing the Call to adventure.
The second paragraph of the quote could be describing our personal myth. Carol Pearson, in The Hero Within, wrote,
"Our experience quite literally is defined by our assumptions
about life. We make stories about the world and to a large degree
live out their plots. What our lives are like depends to a great
extent on the script we consciously, or more likely, unconsciously,
have adopted" (p. xxv).
Sam Keen and
The personal myth is the framework I spoke of earlier. In a narrative sense, this means that we create a story about our lives and that story, with its underlying plots (many of which are inaccurate), organizes and guides our perceptions of ourselves and our experiences of the world. The personal narrative becomes the organizing structure on which we hang experience to give it coherence and "meaning."
Our personal myth or world view also gives us a
sense of security in that it removes much of the unknown from
experience. The danger in this, however, is that the personal myth
also makes it difficult for us to grow and expand our understanding
because to learn means admitting that our understanding is
inadequate. This is both threatening and painful.
"...in the same measure that myth gives us
security and identity, it also creates selective blindness,
narrowness, and rigidity. . .
This idea leads us to the last paragraph quoted
above. Zohar writes, "If, at this personal level, one fails to sense
some coherent world view, then life itself fragments." This is the
crisis of the Call Refused, and is one of the great themes of
literature. The Hamlets, the Willlie Lomans, the Kurtzs that people
the great works of literature all face this crisis and all fail to
readjust their personal myths to incorporate the new experience and
grow from it. The result, as with most cases of refusing the call,
is tragedy.