Nothing Will Ever Change Until There's a Change of Worldview

Or, as Pirsig says....

...to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motor cycle because it is a system is to attack the effects rather than the causes; and as long as the attack is upon its effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systemic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There is so much talk about the system and so little understanding. [Emphasis added] (Robert Pirsig, 1974, p. 94)

For change to occur, people need to make different choices in familiar situations. Since values lie behind all our choices, this means people need to undergo a values shift. For a values shift to occur, people's world-view must change. The diagram below shows the main things which shape a person's world-view:

Two of the most powerful influencers of worldview are emotion and the media:

Emotion

The fastest way of shifting people's world-view is through deliberately provoking a "significant emotive event"--brain washing techniques are an extreme example of this. If you think people would never resort to these techniques, think again! The question we must ask is, are techniques which deliberately provoke "significant emotive events", ethical?
     The debate around this issue could rage on for years, however, the debate can be completely side stepped. How? Well it turns out that, though creating significant emotive events is a very effective way of modifying a person's world-view, those provoking the event have no control whatsoever over how the person's world-view will change. If you cannot control the outcome, then what's the point of employing the technique?
     How can one be so sure that you cannot control the outcome? It's a basic principle of chaos theory. When you provoke a significant emotive event in a person's life, you create a bifurcation in their meaning-system (i.e. the way they'd made sense of the world until that point in time is broken down--bifurcated!). The brain's system of making sense of the world--it's meaning system--is as about as complex as system as you can get --in fact it might very well be the most complex system in the universe. Chaos theory tells us that when a bifurcation occurs in any complex non-linear system (not just the most complex in the universe) no one can predict the outcome.

     So this means, if you deliberately provoke a significant emotive event in a person's life in order to impact on their world-view, you have no control over, nor any way of predicting, what new world-view they will have after the event--how useless then is this as a technique make any change?

"We can't be what we can't see."

Worldview is everything. It shapes our values.

Then, our values determine our choices in life.

In influencing people's worldview, what works best?

What works as both an effective and an ethical means of world-view modification, is the use of a combination of dialogue, experiential learning, and structural change. The key to change is firstly gaining real rapport with people. For genuine rapport to exist, people must really know that you are able to see the world through their eyes and thus really understand why their values are important to them.

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Change = Rapport + Information

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What is a World-View?

A World-view is your personal model of the world. It comprises your beliefs, your knowledge, and your assumptions about the world.

As your world-view changes, you see the world differently, and therefore your responses to situations and circumstances also alter.

"I have met the jailer and he is I.
We are all trapped by our own world-view."
Paul Chippendale

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More...

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Can you please explain what do Foundation, Focus and Vision Values mean? How do you segregate the responses to the AVI under these three groups?

Foundation values are to do with our present interpretation of the past.

Values unfold a person's life in a particular order: from self-preservation, security, belonging, organisation, self-actualisation, service, emerging order, wisdom, to global-transformation. See the video below:

For each of self-preservation, security, belonging, organisation, self-actualisation, service, emerging order (new-order), wisdom, and global-transformation (transcendence) we have identified values which people are likely to hold if their focus is on one of these. For example, if someone is focused on Self-Preservation it will come as no surprise that the values self-preservation, safety/survival, or self-interest would be important to them. Likewise it would come as no surprise to find that someone focused on their organisation's success will have priority values of achievement, efficiency/planning, financial success.

Values associated with self-preservation, security, belonging, organisation, self-actualisation, service, emerging order, wisdom and global-transformation are called values clusters.

The article at: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=154379074586565 gives an overview of the values clusters, how they are related to world-views, and illustrates two cases of people with different foundation, focus and vision values. 

Q. Do you have an up-to-date handout on the AVI world-views?

A. There's one available at: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=154379074586565

What comes first - behaviors or values?

Answer:

1. Worldview (i.e. our self-constructed model of what we believe the world is all about) comes first.
2. We hold certain things as important (i.e. our values) because of our view of the world.
3. We do things based on choices determined by our values (i.e. we behave in certain ways).
4. We view the consequences of our behaviours through the filter of our values.
5. If our modus-operandi for living, based on our worldview isn’t working for us we may change our worldview, then we start the whole cycle again and, as we now have a different worldview, we now also have different values (or at the very least differently prioritised values), so we make different choices and engage in different behaviours, and so on the cycle goes. To change one’s worldview in the face of evidence that it is  no longer working for us is normal behaviour. Conversely,  the definition of insanity is, “Doing the same things in the same way, yet expecting different results” (Stephen G. Haines, The Systems Thinking Approach to Strategic Planning and Management, 2000, CRC Press LLC, Florida U.S,  p. 284). 

Progressing through the world-views

Q. Is it reasonable to correlate the ‘progression’ of world views from Self-Preservation through Security, Belonging, Organisation, etc to a perceived increase in personal control and personal influence?

It would appear that this progression represents an increasingly outward focus from self to family to organisation to broader community, and ultimately to a global focus on systems generally – is this a reasonable observation?

A. I like to call it an unfolding of world-views rather than progress. Rather than perceived influence, I would say desired influence. It's not everyone's "cup of tea" to operate from a particular set of values -- brain-preference has a lot to do with it:

1. The S-FT's prefer to operate in a world of certainly and thus structure and "things" so they are more likely to place a priority on the values of the first four clusters.
   
2. The F-SNs also like a world of certainty and structure but are more "people" focussed than "things". They prefer to belong to like-minded associations/organisations/institutions and to care for people, so they too prefer values associated with the first four clusters but the ones more people focussed.
3. The T-SNs prefer to invent a new technological world -- i.e. they are motivated by the desire to invent, so they will place a priority on many values from the last four clusters, though not so much the people values.
4. The N-FTs are the social architects. They want to create a better society. They too place a priority on many values found in the last four clusters, though mainly those which are people oriented.

As for the concept of progress, check this out:  http://www.minessence.net/progress/ One can progress, in terms of increased complexity, with any set of values -- "it's not the values we have, rather it's how we live them that matters". 

How do we make those important decisions to ensure that they remain viable into the future?

All the decisions you make throughout life are based on the values you hold at the time you make the decision. Your values change when your worldview changes.

Say you experience a significant emotive event that completely changes your worldview, then if you had made a decision before that event, and are now faced with that same decision you will make it differently because you now have different priority values.