Are you an egalitarian, hierarchist, individualist or fatalist? And which of these worldviews do we need to save humanity from itself in the face of a climate emergency?

Earlier this year, I had the privilege of being the external examiner for Frank Chuang‘s PhD at UCL. His thesis is titled “Exploring the Role of Worldviews in the Transition to Sustainable Mobility with Cultural Theory and Agent-Based Modelling”. An open access journal article offers more immediate access to part of his PhD research – https://lnkd.in/eyiUg7tC. The image below draws on that paper to depict my paraphrased understanding of the four worldviews.

Drawing upon the British Social Attitudes Survey, Frank’s research suggests egalitarians are more common than individualists who are more common than hierarchists in British society. Egalitarians associate with non-convervative political parties and tend to be opposite to individualists in this regard.

Frank looked at how different worldviews associate with attitudes to sustainable transport measures. Egalitarianism correlated positively
with: reduce car use; higher car tax; road price incentive; fumes problem; reduce car travel; and low-carbon car and negatively with allow car use. Individualism showed the opposite view (as did hierarhy but with less strength of association).

In terms of the climate emergency one might see egalitarians as the goodies and individualists as the baddies. The cultural theory behind worldviews suggests we need the mix of worldviews in the face of wicked problems. Frank suggests that no world view is superior or could survive on its own – “they also need to rely on each other to correct their blind spots and make societies sustainable”. He goes on to say “Egalitarians help to promote equality, social cohesion, and environmental stewardship; hierarchists help to enforce order, authority, and contracts; and individualists help to advance economic and tech nological progress through their creative energy”.

There is a ‘dialogue of the deaf’ between world views and Frank and his co-authors suggest all voices need to be heard and responded to. Accordingly, the route to sustainable mobility is one of what they call ‘clumsy solutions’ which draw upon all worldviews.

Franks work has certainly helped me make some further sense of the world around me and the frustrating dialogue of the deaf. The logic of worldviews being interdependent for survival makes sense.

However, I have to say that at this stage that survival remains only a hypothesis in the face of the climate emergency and I can’t help but feel the individualists have taken us to the brink, perhaps aided and abetted by the hierarchists.

Nevertheless, this is important work and challenges us to keep our minds open and to look to co-operation to help deliver the change we desperately need.

Thank you Frank for this inspiring work.

#worldview#climatechange#sustainablemobility