Only Two Worldviews

Continuing the sharing two pages from my forthcoming book, The Domination Doctrine: The Worldview Driving It — and the Kinship Worldview

This book takes the scholarly position that beneath the immense diversity of cultures, religions, and philosophies, there are fundamentally only two worldviews: one that understands reality as relational, interdependent, and grounded in living systems, and another that understands reality as separable, hierarchical, and object-based. The first sees humans as embedded within a web of kinship with nature, community, and spirit, where meaning arises through relationship and responsibility, while the second positions humans as distinct observers or controllers of a world composed of discrete parts, where meaning is constructed through abstraction, categorization, and power. All belief systems, cultures and religions tend to orient primarily toward one of these or the other, expressing variations on either a kinship-based understanding of existence or a dominant framework rooted in separation and control.

The first worldview can be thought of as the original one that guided our species for 99% of our human history. I refer to it as the “Kinship worldview” (Wahinkpe Topa & Narvaez, 2022), but it can also be named the Indigenous or Nature/Spirit based worldview (Four Arrows, 1998). This worldview emphasizes animism, spirituality, community, truth, and equality. (See more specific worldview “principles” for both worldviews in the chart below). Note that I make a distinction between Indigenous Place-based Knowledge and Indigenous (Kincentric) Worldview. The former belongs exclusively to those Indigenous cultures who have fluency in their language and ceremonies coupled with many generations of learning in one location. This is something we must fight to protect. The worldview, however, that each diverse Indigenous nation have in common, belongs to all of us.

The second worldview now dominates most of the world and is likely the one readers of the book probably possess. It is essentially colonial, materialistic, capitalistic, individualistic, and anthropocentric. This “dominant worldview” took off like wildfire. It marked not only a shift in how humans lived, but in how they thought and spoke. Noun-based languages, with their emphasis on discrete objects, ownership, and fixed categories, were replaced by noun-based languages that froze and categorized the world into things. With this revolutionary worldview, humanity first began to see itself not as part of Nature, but as its master.

Specific worldview principles are in the chart below. When studying them, it is important to consider the contrasting assumptions about the world with a non-dualistic mindset. The goal is to seek complementarity between them because the Kinship Worldview (KW) is non-dualistic. I offer two examples:

Principle #1: The kinship manifestion is egalitarian and dominant worldview is rigid hierarchy.

One way in which complementarity exists between them is that sometimes people living in an egalitarian culture do use hierarchy as a tool. For example, Indigenous worldview is essentially egalitarian. However, there are appropriate exception. The Lakota, whose traditional way of being was egalitarian, moved into a temporary hierarchy during buffalo hunts. They did this to assure a leader who knew things essential for success and safety.

Principle #39. The kinship manifestation is a high respect for the feminine and dominant worldview is a low respect for the feminine.

In these contrasting pairs, the kinship worldview would never allow for a low respect for women. Here non-dualism and complementarity does not have exceptions as in #1 but is found in allowing oneself to reflect on and better understand why we live with attitudes and systems that tend to make women and the feminine less than the masculine. By understanding male dominance, patriarchy and other dimensions of a worldview that continues this historical unfairness, we are better able to authentically practice and make policies that have equal respect for both.

The worldview chart should not be read as a rigid binary, as if it were asking us to choose between two opposing and mutually exclusive positions. To interpret it that way would already reflect the reductionist tendencies of the dominant worldview itself. Rather, the chart is diagnostic. It distinguishes between pre-colonial, Nature-based orientations and colonial, anthropocentric ones, not to force an either/or choice, but to make visible the underlying patterns shaping our thinking, institutions, and behaviors. Both worldviews are active at once within societies and within ourselves.

This distinction is especially important for understanding initiatives such as Project 2025. What is at stake in such efforts is not merely a set of policies, but the deep assumptions about reality, hierarchy, authority, and the human relationship to the natural world that give rise to them. Without recognizing the worldview beneath these assumptions, critique remains superficial, and alternatives remain unclear.

The purpose of the chart, then, is not to dismiss one side outright, but to realize connections. How does the Dominant Worldview continues to organize our lives, even when we disagree with it? When might it be a good thing to practice the dominant worldview perspective, while recognizing that it should not be the primary broader focus for how the world works? For example, we obviously want to “emphasize our intellect” in our lives at certain times. Should it guide our lives in general or would we consider that an emphasis on “heart wisdom” as the main way we live? What are the consequences of the Dominant Worldview principle and why do people let it guide their lives? Only through this awareness can there be a meaningful movement toward restoring a Nature-based orientation, not as a nostalgic return, but as a lived rebalancing grounded in relationship, reciprocity, and ecological reality.

Differentiating between a temporary practice and the worldview principle with complementarity in mind can be challenging. I saw this clearly during a Zoom presentation with a group of professors. After reviewing the chart, one participant immediately objected: “I don’t see the point. Obviously, we would all choose the Indigenous worldview.” Before I could respond, a colleague asked her, “Is our university not hierarchical? Does it treat women equally? Does it recognize animals and trees as teachers?” The pause that followed was telling. The first professor then acknowledged, “I see your point. Even if we agree with those values, we are still living within the dominant worldview. So we need to understand both more carefully.”

One final thing to say about the two worldviews as a perspective for this book’s focus on the U.S. government and Project 2025’s dangerous implementation relate to geopolitics. Understand the existence of the two worldviews helps us realize that geopolitics is a zero-sum game. Project 2025 and the billionairres supporting it will likely advance the downfall of the American empire while China steps into become the new global empire. However, China, despite its rising imperial ambitions, remains firmly anchored in the same growth-driven, fossil-fuel-dependent, GDP-maximizing worldview, materialist, anthropocentric worldview as the United States. supplant. Thus our analysis of Project 2025 does more than focus just on the US government. It helps us realize that today’s geopolitical competition ultimately a race over who will continue the tragic assault on Mother Earth and all our relations depending on her. Without restoring the principles and precepts of our Kinship worldview, the battle between the U.S. and China will reduce the possibility of the cooperative, post-growth transformation that ecological survival demands.