Birthview & Worldview

Before you even drew you first breath, a significant portion of your life was already determined for you.

In his famous essay, “This is Water”, David Foster Wallace writes:

We are all, at some point in our lives, like the young fish.

Like these fish, we are not always aware of the vast multitude of things which have come together to create the stage upon which we play out our lives.

It’s possible to live your entire life without ever developing the awareness that the particular set of rules, assumptions, expectations you have been following are totally arbitrary, and not serving you.

Millions of people, sadly, live such lives. I have lived this way for many years. Maybe I still am?

Like stage actors, our agency is limited to what is possible within the confines of the stage that has been arranged for us, the scripts that have been handed to us, and the directors forcing us to realize their vision.

But the stage is just a stage, the script is just a script, and the director does not own you.

For some people, developing the awareness of this fact does not matter to them.

There are at least two basic ways it might not matter.

First, it might not matter to someone because the background conditions of their life have made them into the sort of person who does not care to think about such things.

This group of people have so deeply internalized what’s been given to them in life that they wholeheartedly believe they are the character that has been assigned to them, and can’t even think about being anything or anyone else.

Second, it might not matter to someone because even though they are aware that things could be different than they are, there is no need to think about it or change anything, since they are perfectly happy with the way things are going.

This group of people have also deeply internalized what’s been given to them, but they are perfectly happy to play out their role.

I feel particularly bad for people who fall into the first group, but whose lives are not going well.

People who are believed that they have no option other than to play a character they do not enjoy being, but do not have the awareness or belief it is possible for them to be anything else.

These are people who have internalized a set of limiting beliefs about life that are not serving them, and yet don’t understand how things could really ever change.

They are stuck.

The main reason they are stuck is that you cannot change what you aren’t aware of, or fail to understand.

If you want to be able to change your beliefs, and therefore your life, then you need to first become aware of the beliefs you already have.

Being aware of your own beliefs is an excellent first step, since it helps you get your bearings within the vast world of ideas, but many people make the mistake of stopping here.

Awareness of your beliefs is necessary to figure out whether these beliefs are serving you or not, but it is not sufficient.

There is a difference between being aware of or knowing what you believe and understanding your beliefs.

Understanding requires knowing more than just what you believe.

It requires knowing where your beliefs came from and how they relate to what’s possible and true.

It requires stepping outside of your typical thought patterns and viewing yourself from a higher-order, outside perspective.

It requires studying alternative thought patterns, concepts, and worldviews so that you can begin to understand the map of the world of ideas — the map of what it is possible to think.

If you have made it this far, then you have put yourself in a position to begin evaluating whether your current beliefs and assumptions are serving you or not, compared to all of the other possible things you can think and believe.

The way that I recommend doing this is by becoming aware of and developing an understanding of the particular worldview you were born into.

Everyone is born into a worldview that they did not choose for themselves.

I call the worldview you were born into your birthview.

Although we enter the world as a blank slate, we are all very quickly ushered into a particular worldview that will have a significant impact on the first two decades of our lives (at the very least).

It is a sad fact that millions of people live out their entire lives without ever developing the awareness that many of their choices, fears, aspirations, and desires are deeply shaped by a set of circumstances that they had no control over.

But things don’t have to be this way.

You have the ability to gain more control over your thoughts, feelings, and actions.

But it is naive to think that we can become the best version of ourselves without, at some point, having a good understanding of the ways in which our birthview has and continues to influence our thoughts.

Understanding your birthview is important if you want to increase your agency, deepen your self-knowledge, and begin to open up new possibilities of self-creation.

In the next lesson, you are invited to begin this process of becoming aware of and understanding your birthview with the assistance of an advanced AI prompt that I specifically created for this purpose called the Birthview Discovery Master Prompt.

This prompt will help you get started so that you are in a better position to evaluate your current or former beliefs and decide whether they are serving you or not.

Now that you have been introduced to the concept of a micro-philosophy in more detail, it is time to start preparing to build your own.

But we need some raw material to build with.

The rest of this module is dedicated to helping you locate where you currently reside in the world of ideas. The way that I will help you figure out your intellectual coordinates is through uncovering what I call your birthview.

Your birthview is the worldview that you were born into and that gave you the initial set of ideas, values, ethics, and beliefs that shaped your life. By discovering and analyzing your birthview, you will have plenty of material to start building your micro-philosophy with.

The final exercise in this module invites you to compare your birthview to alternate worldviews, many of which you may have never heard of, or only have a basic awareness of. By doing this, you will be able to expand your awareness of what is possible for you to think, feel, and do.

There are many ways to live.

It may just be the case that your birthview is not serving you and had you been born somewhere else, you would have more happily adopted another worldview entirely.

This powerful series of exercises opens the door for someone to begin questioning and changing their worldview entirely, or doubling down on their current worldview by deepening their understanding of it.

The choice is yours.