Worldview: Cultural Explanations of Life and Death
Society.”2 A culture’s worldview focuses on the major assumptions about life that all
individuals, at one time or another, must deal with. Klopf and McCroskey note some
of those assumptions:
Worldview is a set of interrelated assumptions and beliefs about the nature of reality, the organization of the Universe, the purposes of human life, God, and other philosophical matters that are concerned with the concept of being. Worldview relates to a culture’s orientation toward ontological matters or the nature of being and serves to explain how and why things got to be as they are and why they continue that way. 3
From Klopf and McCroskey’s description you can reason that worldviews deal with
some of the following topics:
• What is the purpose of life?
• Does law, chance, or “God” rule the world?
• What is the right way to live?
• What are the origins of the universe, and how did life begin?
• What happens when we die?
• What are the sources of knowledge?
• What is good and bad and right and wrong?
• What is human nature?
• Why do we exist just to die?
• How do we determine “truth”?
• What is our responsibility to other people?
