Wednesday 12 September 2012

WORLDVIEWS

'The language of worldview tends to imply, to paraphrase the Catholic writer Richard Rohr, that we can think ourselves into new ways of behaving. But that is not the way that culture works. Culture helps us behave ourselves into new ways of thinking. The risk of thinking "worldviewishly" is that we will start to think that the best way to change culture is to analyse it. We will start worldview academies, host worldview seminars, write worldview books. These may have some real value if they help us understand the horizons that our culture shapes, but they cannot substitute for the creation of real cultural goods. And they will subtly tend to produce philosphers rather than plumbers, abstract thinkers rather than artists and artisans. They can create a cultural niche in which "worldview thinkers" are privilege while other kinds of culture makers are shunted aside.
But culture is not changed simply by thinking.'
Andy Crouch, Culture Making, p.64.