What do you mean?

We may choose words that say what we mean, but other people use those same words to mean something very different.

Is a “liberal” someone with empathy, a generous spirit, and a commitment to justice for all – or someone who has abandoned faith and traditional morality and wants the government to control our lives? I hear it used both ways.

Is a “conservative” someone with traditional values who believes in law and order and free market capitalism – or someone without empathy who judges people by a rigid set of rules and wants the government to stay out of their lives (except for matters such as abortion and LGBTQ rights)?

How often have we heard people say “it’s just common sense”? As if “everyone” knows what’s right or wrong and some just choose to do what’s wrong – going against common sense. But whose “common sense”? How much do we share in common with other people in how we understand the world?

Two ways of seeing the world – two worldviews – have always existed together in this world. To say they “co-exist,” as if there is mutual respect or understanding, is often not true. More often they are in conflict, creating “sides” in a dispute about what is right or wrong. What seems like common sense in one worldview is often rejected as nonsense in the other view.

An authoritarian worldview – how we think the world should be – values strict rules, punitive discipline, top-down authority, retributive justice (“they got what they deserve”). Somone has to be in charge, in this view, and historically those who take charge in family, religion, business, or government have been men. For much of the world in the past 500 years, they have been white men who believed they had the right to command and dominate, to have power over other people.

You may think such a worldview is wrong, but much of the world has accepted that way of life as common sense. It’s how it’s always been, people say. It’s tradition, perhaps ordained by God to be that way. If you reject that view of life, you are more inclined toward the other worldview.

A compassionate view of how you want the world to be values personal freedom, tempered with individual responsibility. It values discipline as a means of helping someone learn a better way, guiding or redirecting the other person – not punishing, but healing and restoring relationships (restorative justice). It values shared power, cooperation, collaboration – equality and equity in the world around us, whether family, religion, business, or government. We may hold a position of leadership, but we exercise it with empathy and respect for everyone.

This is not a binary choice – one or the other. It’s not so much a linear continuum (as this image suggests) but more of a web with interlocking circles. No one is all one or the other. In some situations, any one of us might be more authoritarian (take charge, make it happen, enforce the rules), but in other situations we might see empathy, respect, compassion, and collaboration as the best path forward.

George Lakoff, a cognitive psychologist at UC Berkeley now retired, introduced me to a family model – strict father or nurturant parent – to understand fundamental differences in how we see the world. His focus was on politics (See Moral Politics and Don’t Think of an Elephant), but I could see how the model explained a lot about religious and theological differences or dynamics of family life and business.

Someone challenged me a few months ago to consider using language and images that are not gender-specific or related to family. As a model for understanding why people see the world so differently – and why “common sense” means different things to us – authoritarian and compassionate worldviews existing alongside each other throughout history made sense to me. I invite you to consider it. Test it out in the many contexts of your life – whether politics, family, religion, business, even sports. Which way of seeing the world – how it “should” be or how you want it to be– feels like “common sense” to you?