Why You Think the Way You Do, by Glenn Sunshine
Chapter 1: What is a World View and Why Should I Care:
A worldview is the framework you use to interpret the world and your place in it. It is
like a set of glasses that you look through to bring what is happening in the world into
mental focus.
What you think of other people and your relationship to them is evident in how you treat
them.
You may think we have a particular worldview when in fact we do not. For example, if
we say we care about the environment, if that is part of what defines our self image, yet
we litter or dump our motor oil down the storm drains, we reveal through our actions
what we really think and what our values really are –and thus our worldview. This is
how worldviews operate – below the radar; behind the scenes, guiding our thoughts,
words, and actions and only rarely being examined or analyzed.
For society to function effectively or to have any semblance of stability, there must be
broad agreement on at least a cores set of values drawn from a common conception of
what it means to be human and how we are to relate to each other, which in turn
presupposes a set of beliefs about the world, truth, and morality.
A society’s worldview can change over time, resulting in changes in the culture. If your
want to understand why and how a civilization changes over time, you need to track the
evolution of its dominant worldview.
This book will explain the development of Western civilization from the perspective of
the changes in worldview from the Roman Empire to the early years of the 21st century.
Religion is essential to understanding worldviews. In Western history, this means
particularly Christianity. In fact, in many ways the history of Western worldviews is the
history of the rise of Christianity and with it the emergence of a biblical worldview.
The key dynamic that begins the development of a distinctly Western worldview is the
interaction of Greco-Roman civilization with Christianity. To understand this dynamic I
must start with a survey of worldviews within the Roman Empire.
Selected quotes from chapter 2, The Worldview of Ancient Rome:
The Roman Empire is a paradox. For the last 2000 years, the Empire has dominated
Western ideas about what makes a great civilization. And there is no doubt that Rome
was great. At its height the Empire ruled territory from northern Britain to North Africa,
from the borders of Persia to the Atlantic Ocean – territory conquered through the
unrivaled power of the Roman military machine.
Within the Roman world, peace and prosperity reigned, with vigorous trade; literature
and the arts; efficient government; and the rule of law as the hallmarks of Roman
civilization.
But there was a dark side to Rome as well. The Roman economy and all its engineering
feats were products of slave labor. The slaves themselves came from people who had
become so impoverished that the only thing they could do was to sell themselves or their
children to pay their dates or from prisoners of war or rebels against Roman rule.
People were killed regularly as public entertainment in gladiatorial matches and other
spectacles. At the highest levels of society, treachery, poisoning, and assassination were
common. Roman decadence, gluttony and sexual perversion are legendary.
Both sides of the Roman world flow naturally from the worldview of the Empire, and
when viewed from this perspective, both make sense.
Religion in the Roman World:
The Roman Empire had a bewildering array of religious options. With the exception of
Judaism, all of these fall into the broad category of paganism. Paganism is most often
connected to nature worship. Before the days of artificial lighting and climate control,
people were much more in tune with the natural order and were abundantly aware that
they were at the mercy of the elements.
The primary function of religion was to keep the gods happy so they did not destroy the
people. Gods were feared, not loved.
Emperors were considered gods and had incense burned to their statues. Except for Jews,
who as monotheists were given a special dispensation not to participate in pagan religious
activities, anyone who refused to burn incense to the emperor’s statue was refusing to
acknowledge his political authority. This was treason pure and simple, and so any nonJew who refused to worship the emperor was tortured and killed.
Platonism:
Platonism towered over all philosophical schools in the Greco-Roman world. Plato
argued that because the physical world was constantly changing it cannot be the
fundamental ground of reality. According to him, the ultimate reality must be based in
the nonphysical world of ideas since they do not change (according to him). For him
clear thinking and logic are the best approaches to understanding the world.
Aristotle taught that logic and philosophy, not experiment, were the proper means for
understanding physics and all other branches of learning.
What did this mean for Roman society?
They thought that since we know what is superior and what is inferior, we have the basis
for determining what is right and wrong. The higher up on the hierarchy you are, the
more authority you have over the things that are below you and the more rights and
privileges you can claim for yourself. (Status was everything)
Slavery:
Among men, some were considered more capable intellectually than others, and in a
proper world, these superior people would control society. Wealth, bloodline, and power
were the criteria for determining who was superior to whom.
Slaves were considered intrinsically inferior to free people – Aristotle ranked them as
“living tools”, little better than animals – and thus undeserving of anything better than
their lot in life. This was true of people who fell into debt, since they demonstrated that
they were not capable of taking care of themselves or their families. It was true of
criminals and of prisoners of war, who by virtue of being on the losing side demonstrated
that they were inferior to winners.
Work and Wealth:
Roman nobles began developing large, slave-run plantations. They increasingly gave
themselves over to lives of luxury, with beautiful artwork, gardens and homes. What
better way to live a life contemplating the spirit than to live in the midst of beauty? The
luxury they sought pulled them inexorably toward activities that catered to the flesh. As
often happens luxury led to excess in terms of both gluttony and sexual orgies. The
higher up the social scale, the more perverse and extreme the sexual activities became.
While elites were giving themselves over to refined living and debauchery, someone
needed to be doing the work to support them. Since productive labor dealt with the
material world, it was seen as demeaning, fit only for inferiors such as the lower classes
and slaves. In the heyday of the Empire, virtually the entire economy depended on slave
labor.
Most of the urban residents in the Empire lived in appalling squalor in disease-ridden
tenements, living hand to mouth existence with a life expectancy of around 30. The great
engineering and building achievements primarily and intentionally benefited the elites.
They may have provided employment for the masses, but they did little else for them.
Abortion and Infanticide:
Romans frequently used a variety of herbal and other contraceptive measures to prevent
pregnancy. When those failed, they used surgical abortion as a means of birth control.
Infanticide was always an option. The earliest codification of Roman law, made it
mandatory for the father to kill any visibly deformed child born into the family. This
practice was considered essential to the health of the society and was supported by
prominent thinkers such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, among others.
The wealthy as well as the poor practiced abortion and infanticide at least as often as the
poor. The only explanation is that it was a cultural trend; not one that was dictated by
economics.
As Rome stopped expanding, the supply of slaves from prisoners of war dried up and no
new workers came in. With birthrates dropping, the Romans were forced to make up the
gap by permitting into the Empire more and more Germanic immigrants from beyond the
borders. This resulted in a cultural change within the Empire and eventually to its
demise.
Next week: Christianity and the transformation of the pagan world
Notes:
Aristotle: (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of
Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics metaphysics,
poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.
Together with Plato and Socrates (Plato's teacher), Aristotle is one of the most important
founding figures in Western philosophy. Aristotle's writings constitute a first at creating a
comprehensive system of Western philosophy, encompassing morality and aesthetics,
logic and science, politics and metaphysics.
Plato (428 BC – 348 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of
philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of
higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student,
Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of natural philosophy, science, and Western
philosophy. Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was as much influenced by his
thinking as by what he saw as his teacher's unjust death.