In a previous posting I described a violent incident at our exploration camp in Peru (Life, freedom and karma). The experience generated a lot of funny stories, and I could tell you about how we hired a videographer from a local television station to film a documentary about mining violence. The documentary was never produced but we found out who was trying to shut us down. It also allowed us to establish our own clandestine pro-mining organization to confound our anti-development enemies and win community support for our work. It was all very “spy vs spy” and a lot of fun but those are stories for another day.
The kidnap experience led directly to my decision to pursue a PhD and write a dissertation on worldview and resource development conflict. My interest was not just an academic pursuit, but it allowed me to test my hypothesis that the Tambogrande project conflict may have looked like a duck but was not, in fact, a duck. I believed that the conflict was a clash of worldviews that had nothing to do with environmental issues. If thought that if I could prove my hypothesis, then perhaps I could convince someone to put up the money to purchase the resource asset.
In 2002 a Dutch investigator had published the results of a community survey taken shortly after that famous resource conflict. In 2012 I repeated this survey and added my own worldview survey to see how the results corresponded. It is worth noting that the local military authority told me not to come to the community because, if I was going to be yapping about the events of 2001, then they could not guarantee my safety. It had been quite a conflict. Instead, I hired five young coeds from a nearby university and they delivered over fifty, randomly acquired survey responses. My research project covered a much larger geographic area than this small agrarian community, but it was the results of these questionnaires that motivated my academic attention.
In short, the responses I obtained from the repeated 2002 survey were unchanged from the original results. If asked, the community members said, emphatically, that they remained very anti-development. However, if asked about how resource development fit into their worldview, they were very pro-development. The two results could not have been more diametrically opposed. I hypothesized a few things from this including:
people are capable of simultaneously holding opposing views on the same topic if the opinions are held at different levels of consciousness
upper-level opinions are subject to emotional stimuli and lower-level opinions can be hidden and more representative of the truth
Following the development conflict, the community of Tambogrande was overrun by informal miners who were abusive to the local citizens perpetrating several rapes and at least one murder. Th mayor of the community, paid by the informal miners, operated his fiefdom with strict discipline. Hence the military warning to me. The people feared the informal miners and, because lawless informal mining is antithetical to organized resource development, felt they had to be against development. But at a deeper level, the people wanted organized development to stop the violent invasion of their community.
This insight was earlier illumined by our pro-mining organization who, by calming one community’s fear of attack by an adjacent community, allowed our company to continue its exploration program. The community was not unhappy with our exploration program; they were unhappy with the threats being issued by their neighbours. In the case of Tambogrande, my conclusion was born out by a brave newspaper reporter who subsequently infiltrated the community and came to the same conclusion. In the end, my research was a pyrrhic victory because I could not convince potential investors to finance my spy vs spy adventure which is too bad. It would have been great.
So why tell you all this? It is my belief that, when we read the news or talk to other people, we would do very well to always ask the question, “What is really behind this?” I think a lot of so-called environmental and social conflicts are actually driven by differences of worldview.
For example, the huffing and puffing at the annual climate conference recently concluded and as I looked at pictures of the private jets lined up at airports around Sharm el Sheikh I wondered, “Hmmm… do these people think CO2 is a problem?” I spent a few hours on the COP27 website reading the brave pronouncements and thought, “This reads like the COP1 to COP26 announcements. Will there be a change this year?” China, Russia, and India remain outside of the polluters pen and the small nations remain inside the “You owe us trillions of dollars!” pen. After the conference everyone got onto an airplane leaving behind non-specific promises and a bunch of Sharm el Sheikh vendors with broad smiles on their faces. I am all for this sort of thing, but I think there are worldview rather than environmental issues being played out.
When this or that poll result is issued on any number of topics, your question should be, “What is really being polled?” My questionnaire asked all kinds of questions about cosmology and relationships, but it was really designed to find out if the respondents were in favour of resource development. The intention of the person asking the questions can be unrelated to the topic of the questions.
Increasingly, when the government tells you to do this or that because of “science” or “to flatten curves” or “it will be more efficient” it is legitimate to ask, “What science and what curves and for how long and what else will be efficient?” Skepticism is not a sin and transparency is often the bane of the government program.
Recently the US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, when asked about progress in Ukraine suggested that it would be a good idea to start negotiating an end to the conflict. This surprised the White House and less than a week later General Milley offered his updated view that Ukraine was racking up success after success after success. So why negotiate? To understand General Milley’s real position on the war, it would be good to understand his underlying worldview.
Elon Musk recently sold many shares in one of his companies to pay an exorbitant price for the moribund social media platform, Twitter. Did he see a large profit to be made? Is he a free speech martyr? Did he have a moment of weakness in raising his nine children? Opinions on his motivations have provided grist for many internet writing mills but no one is examining his worldview to understand what drives his motivations.
If you are a young woman dating a young man and your test question is “Will you watch Pride and Prejudice with me tonight?” then don’t be drawn in by his enthusiastic and positive response. His worldview does not include enjoying romantic comedies, so he is lying to achieve a different goal. You need to find out what that goal is and decide whether it is consistent with your worldview. If, in response to your Mr. Darcy question, he responds, “Uggh. How about we watch ‘Rambo 25: Yet more blood’ instead?” he may be a keeper. At least he is not afraid to tell the truth.
In conclusion then, when trying to understand your friend’s position on an issue or in determining if they are telling you the truth, look for clues to their underlying worldview. I recommend that you always be cynical and skeptical. If you set the bar low enough, humanity will never disappoint you.