Session 3:

Worldviews and Codes of Conduct

PREP

WORLDVIEWS and CODES OF CONDUCT

How has colonization impacted how we understand the world

and how we engage within it?

We’re offering resources as prompts to help you explore your personal and collective worldviews and codes of conduct.

What is a Worldview?

It is not about the physical reality of the world that you and I live in; that is science. Instead:

  1. It is the metaphysical, or philosophical, or ideological reality of the world you and I live in.

  2. It governs how we live, not where we live. It defines why we live, what we live for, what we appreciate, what we reject, what we are passionate about, how we explain our experiences, and what we detest.

Reference:

https://www.family.org.sg/wholelife/Resources/Articles/wholelife/contents/Articles/Values/The_Three_Factors_that_Shape_Our_Worldview.aspx


READ: Indigenous Peoples Worldviews vs Western Worldviews

READ (again): Indigenous Worldview and Codes of Conduct

READ: Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery

WATCH: Indigenous Thinking For Troubled Times by Tyson Yunkaporta


Why do we hang on to our worldviews?

  1. We have been mis-educated

  2. Want to belong

  3. We want to feel secure

  4. We believe our meaningful experiences validate our worldview and believe if they are meaningful to us they must be true for someone else

  5. We believe our worldview is moral and/or just

  6. It’s familiar. Challenging worldviews is disorientating and scary- we want to avoid this

  7. We believe the time has past where action could/should have been taken.

  8. We want to keep the privilege associated with it

  9. We believe our worldview is complete

  10. We think we're right

  11. We're not sure about the boundary between our personality and our worldview.

EXERCISE

Our national Sunday services are an excellent source for us to understand the collective Canadian Unitarian Universalist worldview and codes of conduct. During these services, we speak to ourselves about ourselves within a ritual that prescribes our norms, rules, responsibilities, and proper practices of an individual or an organization.

Watch this youtube recording of the most recent worship service and write down in a shared document the ways that you notice we declare our worldview and codes of conduct. Be sure to write your name next to your observations. If you read a comment that sparks curiosity, insight, question, clarification, etc., please respond to it using the comment feature. We aren't here to criticize the Worship service, but rather to witness the culture we participate in.

For example: "Amber here! I noticed that..... and what that tells me about our collective UU worldview is..."

Journal Prompts

What is my worldview?

How did I develop it?

Which parts of my worldview might I potentially change?

Which parts are set, and not something I would consider changing? Why? Why Not?

In what ways might my worldview be limiting and/or limited?

In what way is my worldview similar and/or different from Unitarian worldview?

Where did I learn my codes of conduct? What are those codes? How are they similar or different from Unitarian codes?

What does uncolonizing my worldview and codes of conduct look like to me in my life?