Module 1 - Worldview Fundamentals

Explore the foundations of your beliefs - they shape how you see the world and yourself.

This module focuses on the basic building blocks that make up your worldview. Your worldview is a combination of your values, beliefs, and assumptions that coalesce into a framework that shapes how you think, feel, and make decisions. Whether pondering life's toughest questions (identity, meaning and purpose, etc.) or life's most mundane questions (what should I eat for breakfast?) your worldview provides guiding principles to help you navigate to the answer.

Although our worldview shapes every area of our lives, many aspects of it were developed unconsciously. Influenced by our upbringing, culture, education, and personal experiences, many of our beliefs emerged gradually without deliberate choice. As they took root, they became so ingrained in our lives that, like the air we breathe, we rarely notice them today. Because our worldview operates in the background, it often goes unnoticed, unevaluated, and it may even contain contradictions! Understanding and developing your worldview isn't just an intellectual exercise - it significantly impacts how you approach complex situations.

Consider some of the following:

• What does a fair governmental justice system look like?

• How much should we prioritize alleviating human suffering over alternative values like environmental protection?

• Which economic system is the best functioning? Which is the most fair?

• What criteria should we use to distinguish truth from opinion or belief?

• If two people disagree about the morality of an action, how do you decide who is right?

• Does life have intrinsic meaning, or is meaning something we create for ourselves?

Your answers to the above questions, whether carefully reasoned or quickly improvised, rely on assumptions—about fairness, the value of human life, and the nature of truth—that you might not have fully examined. By investigating your underlying beliefs, you’ll discover how well they align with each other, with your faith, and with your lived experience. Remember: having a worldview isn’t optional. Everyone has one. The question is not whether you have a worldview, but what it is composed of.

Let’s begin uncovering the beliefs that shape how you see the world and exploring the foundations of your worldview.