What Influences How We Form Our Worldview?

How do we come to believe in a Worldview? What is it that forms our Worldview? This article explains how we all come to form a Worldview, whether we are aware of it or not.

Every human being possesses a Worldview. However, we are not born with one. The Worldview to which we hold forms the bulk of our identity. Considering that as an infant we don’t really possess the capacity to form words, let alone comprehend abstract concepts, lends us to comprehend the reality that we don’t come with a Worldview. A Worldview is formed in us over time, solidifying as we experience the various events of life. There are some things that directly influence how we form our Worldviews and others which do so indirectly. So, what are these things and how do they participate in forming our Worldview, and our identity?

When you sit down to really think about it, you would be able to easily identify what these things are. It is rather intuitive once you actually toss the idea around in your head. This is probably the simplest aspect of understanding what Worldviews are and where they come from. As we go through the list, it is important to note that we might be able to identify any number of things which influence our Worldview. However, most all individual things can be categorized into what is going to be identified here. Some might be able to reorganize or perhaps change the labels of these things, but this list seems the simplest yet most comprehensive way to explain this subject.

Family

Perhaps the most obvious of the formers of our Worldview would be our immediate family. Our parents are the most significant influencers over us as we grow from infancy to young adulthood. Even if we find in our modern times that kids spend more time at school or in front of a TV these days, parents hold a unique and special place in how we form our identities, and as such, our Worldview. Our parents will instill in us those values and principles that they hold dear and will raise us to believe as they believe. They teach us what is right and what is wrong, and they explain the narrative story of humanity and the cosmos to us as we ask questions and experience new discoveries in our little lives. This continues well into adulthood for those who have a strong, positive relationship with our parents, but can dwindle off as we become more independent.

Beyond just our mothers and fathers, our older siblings and other relatives also influence how we form our Worldviews. Where we see our parents agree or disagree with aunts and uncles, as our grandparents tell us the stories of their lives, and as our older brother and sisters hassle us and play with us, they all impact how we form our Worldview. There are many out there who would argue that this is all there is to how we form our Worldviews, but these tend to be very biased individuals, using such a theory as a way to demean or belittle the Worldview to which they are opposed. While the impact our family has on our Worldview is quite significant, it is not the only thing that forms both our identity as well as the Worldview which grounds it.

Beyond immediate family and relatives from our youth on into adulthood, we must include our spouses as well. As we begin to form our own families, experiencing what it is like to be our parents by being parents ourselves, our Worldview starts to haves its practical application challenged or validated. Our children will dramatically impact our Worldview, as most any new father can tell you, the world changes once you hold your first born in your arms. These experiences, along with the sense of duty and obligation to raise our children in truth, all impact our Worldviews in ways that nothing else can. Becoming a parent is at once both greatly joyful and humbling, bringing even the most confident to their knees in search for the answers that they will have to provide to the little one they hold in their arms.

Friends

The next influencer is our circle of friends as we grow up and even into our adulthood. Those outside of family with whom we form special bonds of friendship will impact our Worldview more dramatically than family depending on our relationship with parents and relatives. If we have healthy and strong relationships with our parents, then friends will not have as much of an impact. However, if our relationships with our parents are tainted with difficulty and challenges, then our friends become the next best thing as we try to find answers to life. Our friends tend to impact our Worldview from something of a “Peer Pressure” standpoint. This can be both positive and negative depending on what they are trying to influence you to be.

What is also unique in this relationship is how our personality can allow friends to be more significant influencers, or less significant. If we are strong willed and bold, then we will impact our friends more than they will impact us. If we are more easily swayed, perhaps more on the shy or timid side, we’ll adjust our own self to meet what our friends seem to expect out of us. But even if we hold something of a leadership role amongst our friends, how they respond to our leadership will also impact our Worldview, especially in the area of our Ethic and Practical Application of the Worldview. As we get older, if we do not form our own Worldview consciously, then whatever way the wind blows our friends, so too will we follow. However, our personality plays a role in that also.

Community

As you can probably tell, we are going from the more immediate and direct influencers and working our way out. That next “ring of influence” if you will, would be the community within which we are raised. Culture has the most significant impact on us growing up, and has the most significant sway on our Ethic and more superficial levels of Worldview formation. However, depending on the traditions within the culture we are raised, other elements such as the Narrative story of the Worldview can be formed by the telling of the history of the community within which we are raised. The common customs and courtesies of the community will impact how we behave when interacting with others, and the “social norms” of the community will affect what we perceive to be the normal course of human affairs.

The most common influencer of our Worldview within the community is that desire we have to “fit in.” We’ll find ourselves accepting certain beliefs held by the community simply out of a desire to live well and peacefully among our neighbors and townships. However, this can wear off as we get older. As we begin to venture out on our own, being exposed to other cultures and communities, again depending on our personality, other cultures and communities may begin to influence us. It is in these situations that a person either attempts to adjust their Worldview to syncretize with that of the new communities they come to call home, or they will stay true to their roots. Either way, this dynamic has a major impact on how our Worldview is formed both in our youth and in adulthood.

Education

Moving now from the broader stroke influencers of our Worldviews to the more specific, the most dramatic influencer is our education. Depending on where we are educated and what the Worldview is that is being taught, we will find ourselves adopting whatever Worldview the educators have. This has a stronger influence over our Worldview formation than family and friends however, that can be impacted by our personality as well. But regardless, education is what provides us with answers to various questions we may have had, or never even thought of asking, or ever really cared to. The institutions of learning in our community and culture instill in us in the most direct and repetitive form of the values, principles, and applications of the Worldview that dominates the educators, whether they are consciously aware of it or not.

Within the curriculum of the more formal educational institutions is a Worldview that establishes what is important. How is history taught? What history is going to be taught? What subjects are the most important? All of these decisions made by educators come from their Worldview as it was taught to them by the educational institutions they attended to earn their degrees and certifications to teach. Since it is at school that we are first exposed to the environment of asking questions and getting answers, if our parents were not doing that to our personal satisfaction before attending school, then our teachers become our north star. We find ourselves looking to them for guidance and direction, and the content of the subjects they teach become the prophets and priests of our new Worldview. Again, depending on how healthy and strong our relationship is with our parents and relatives, whatever Worldview is being taught by our educators will become the Worldview we start off with in the world.

Beyond just the direct impact of our educational institutions on our Worldview, we must also come to understand that school is not our only source for information. As we grow up and complete school, we find other sources for learning about the things going on in the world. Our sources for information change, and we exchange teacher for news outlets and professors for authors of books. Whatever the Worldview is of our sources for news and information, that Worldview will slowly become our own if we do not carefully form it for ourselves. As we seek information, seeking the truth about the world from various sources, these become our new educators, and it is more than just reporting they offer. They also tell us these things through the lens of their own Worldview. The more they tickle our ears with what we like, the more we begin to find ourselves agreeing with whatever they happen to be reporting on, more than just the information, but also the way they are reporting it.

Popular Influence

As we get older, we all go through something of a rebellious streak it seems. Again, depending on our personality, and how healthy and strong our relationships are with family and friends, the next most significant influencer is that which is popular at the time. This influencer coincides with the “sources of information” described in the previous section. However, this influencer is more along the lines of popular culture, entertainment, media personalities, and those we look up to. The leaders we come to admire and turn to for guidance as we go through life because of how they draw us in. Not because they are necessarily doing anything dubious (though that is always a concern), but because these popular influencers have…influence. Because of their stardom, their personality, their style, or their persuasiveness, these popular influencers are those individuals who make up the world of Music and Movies, Art and Style.

These influencers tend to start impacting us the most in our more formative teenage years. How they portray themselves and the opinions they hold to play on our emotions more than anything. Whenever we are mad at our parents, we turn to that popular rock star or movie star from Hollywood that says all the right things and whose swagger and personality makes us want to duplicate what they do. It might even be a leader in the community, someone who has influence and power. Often times we are drawn to politicians or media personalities like talk show hosts or popular podcasters. These are people who have a way of influencing others in a way that almost seems unnatural. Next to our education and family, these popular influencers can quickly fill personal gaps in our lives. Maybe we are raised in a broken home, and some popular personality in local community fills in that fatherly role for us in our hearts. Whatever the case may be, their influence can impact us well into adulthood, and we always have someone that we turn to who can help us fill the gaps in our Worldview.

Life Experiences

Another major influencer of our Worldview acts on us in more of an indirect way. This influencer works on us seemingly in the background. Other times, it slaps us in the face, devastating us to our core, and causing a dramatic transformation in our identity and how we view the world. This is our life experience. As we go through life from childhood on into adulthood, the things we live out and experience will either validate the beliefs instilled in us by our family, friends, and community, or will absolutely decimate them. Sometimes these events expose something that we thought was true. Other times they may make our beliefs so real that we have no idea how others could possibly think otherwise.

Life experiences may not be the most significant influencer, but it is the validator of what we have been influenced to believe. There are times where traumatic experiences can shock us into complete denial of reality, shaking us to our very core. Other times we have subtle discoveries happen that poke holes in what we thought was true. No matter the case, what we experience in life will have either a positive or negative impact on our Worldview. It is most often a life experience that slaps us out of the superficial living we might be enjoying and that compels us to think more deeply about what it is we believe. While the event may not influence our Worldview directly, it certainly snaps us out of whatever daydream one of the other influencers might have had us living in.

Self

The final influencer is the one you might have been tempted to put first on the list. We would all like to think that we’ve come to form our own Worldview alone. However, as we’ve gone through this list, I think you might be challenged to rethink that supposition. The influence of our own conscious thinking on our beliefs is always actively involved, however, it is not often that we engage our thinking down to the “deeper” level of the philosophical questions of God, Man, and the Cosmos. Really pondering on how we answer the questions of Origin, Meaning, Morality, and Destiny is not always the thing we spend time doing in the morning while sipping our coffee. This is why I mention this influencer last.

As we go through life, what typically brings a person to carefully consider how they answer these questions is some sort of traumatic life experience. A dearest loved one dies in an unexpected manner, something we held deeply to be true is found out to be false, or we feel our trust has been betrayed by someone we were devoted to. These sorts of significant life experiences can put us in a pretty dark or concerned place where we have a sudden need to find answers to these questions. Whatever Worldview we had at the time simply didn’t provide us with the answers we needed (or we were just not aware of them, or simply didn’t like them). For the average person, these are the scenarios that lead us to really seek after the answers with thoughtful and concentrated focus. However, there are those of us who are blessed with the desire to seek out these answers without such experiences too.

Perhaps someone inspires us to seek out the answers. A mature and philosophical level person really engages us and challenges us to think on what our beliefs really are, and why we believe them. Just as much as a negative experience forces us into the need for answers, so to can positive arousal of curiosity. Many experience this in the halls of Universities, public and private alike. Some experience it as they meet new people and cultures. Others just have that personality that leads them down the path of questioning everything. In the end, we all ultimately determine what Worldview we will follow, either by letting others form it for us, or by doing so ourselves.

Bringing it all together

What we can see throughout this process of listing the various influencers of our Worldview is that the formation of our Worldview is a life-long process. As we experience new things and witness events we hadn’t experienced yet, our Worldview can change both in small ways, and in transformative ways. Indeed, the very concept of “transforming” one’s self is most directly tied to taking on a whole new framework of seeing the world, or in other words, adopting a whole new Worldview. In organizing these influencers in the manner that I have, you should be able to see something of a path that we all take in life to achieve that goal of forming a Worldview. Such was the intention.

We all begin the Worldview Formation process in our childhood. This is where our parents and family have the greatest impact on how we form our Worldviews early in life. The more our parents put into helping us build our Worldview to match theirs, the stronger a bond we form with them. As we ask our parents and grandparents questions about life, if they all provide the same answers, and show us how they came to those conclusions, we become quite strong in our identity and become more stable in our life. However, if our parents do not put much into us, or they venture down that shaky path of, “Oh, let’s just let them make that up for themselves,” we won’t even know where to start. If our parents do not raise us into what they believe, then we can become lost, and our connection with them and the rest of our family becomes weak. If we can’t get our answers from them, or they are not willing to provide them, we begin to look elsewhere.

As we start to attend school at an early age, we are not so much impacted by our teachers as we are by our peers. However, if the bonds at home are broken, then our teachers become stronger parental figures for us, and they will have a greater impact on how we form our identity. However, it isn’t exactly helpful to have multiple adults filling in for the roles of our mothers and fathers, especially in our pre-teen years. As we interact with other students, and become exposed to their ideas (simple as they may be), those kids we come to admire or look up to will start to influence us. So, we see how important teachers and friends are at the earliest stage of our Worldview development, and how dramatically important the active role of our parents in forming our Worldviews is. So in our early childhood, there is a balance that needs to be maintained if we are to form a stable and worthwhile Worldview in our youth. If you are a parent, and you have not been actively working to teach your children the Worldview you hold to, be sure to dedicate time to telling them what it is, and encouraging them to ask questions. Not just the “what” but the “why.”

Once we get into our teenage years, community and popular culture begin to play their part. Our parents are still the most important and significant formers. Where they fail, we will fill the gap by turning to popular media, entertainment, movie and music stars, and other popular figures in the culture. Teachers start to become less influential as we get older, but the good ones stay in our minds as that balance with parents and family is weighed out. Friends and our peer group start to have the most dramatic impact in the modern public school system, as being popular and stresses of youthful life start to take their toll on our personality and solidifying of our identity. We are exposed to the Worldviews of all of these different groups and influencers, and if we do not have that stable bond at home, we can see the maelstrom that is the life of a teenager trying to find answers in the world.

This then continues on into our young adult life as we move out of the home and into the “real world.” As we begin to experience life’s stresses of rent and bills, getting to class on our own and balancing our schedules, we lose the extra time we squandered in our youth as our days are filled with study or work. That is where educators continue to have significant influence alongside our friends and peer groups, and our exposure to other cultures and Worldviews on the job site or in the college classroom. This is where our sources for information become the biggest influencers of our Worldview formation. As we get challenged in courses by Ivory Tower professors, and all the books we read, or as we deal with our bosses and senior employees at work, all of these things begin to rapidly solidify the Worldview we carry for most our lives. Then life experiences begin to settle in.

Conclusion

As we go through all these stages, please note that this is not always the way it goes. We all have different life experiences, and we are not all raised the same. Not all of us go to school or find work. We do not all fall into the sway of Hollywood and political movements. However, this pattern does tend to play itself out for the average everyday “Joe Schmo” type. Life Experience and the Self is what it ultimately comes down to. Parents can influence, Family can, long-time Friends can, Popular Influence, various information sources, all of these things continually impact us. In the end, it all comes down at some point in time to the individual person, sitting down one day and finally asking his or her self the questions of life, and figuring out what they really believe.

Which of these influencers have most impacted you? Have you allowed yourself to be swayed by popular media, or did a certain professor or teacher really impact you? Are your beliefs really your own, or did you allow someone else to form them in you? Do you know why you believe what you do? I hope that having read through this and the other articles in this series has challenged you in considering these questions. Perhaps the most important of all, is are you comfortable with having someone else form your Worldview, or do you think it would be better for you to do so yourself?

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