Really, the most vivid memory I have, as a six year old watching The Wizard of Oz for the first time, is of the horror of the flying monkeys. At least that’s what woke me up from that early nightmare. Aside from that, I’m sure I was entranced by the story and ended up reading all of the Oz books as a youngster. While the world of Oz was a very special place for an inquisitive child, I don’t remember spending much time philosophizing about the role of the curtain and the man behind it. I don’t think a kid of eight or so is all that good at inferring from hidden meaning.

So, maybe I’m making up for lost time.

Because, in fact, we’re always trying to look behind the curtain to find out who or what is pulling the levers. And, I don’t just mean scientists or philosophers or psychologists or any other line of professionals whose business it is to peel away at layers to see what’s what.

I mean we all, in our own ways, want to know what’s really going on and why.

All of us want some kind of explanation so we can make sense of our experience. I’m not sure I’ve met anyone who could honestly say, “You know, everything is random. I mean everything. Nothing makes sense and, in all honesty, it shouldn’t. I inhabit a reality with absolutely no meaning to anything. There’s no purpose. I can’t count on a single thing.”

(It might come as a surprise that, actually, this line of thinking is behind some pretty major philosophical movements that still resonate today.)

So, to be overly general, we all seek meaning in order to actually live our lives. We want to know, whether simply or profoundly, what is important and what is not and how we’re supposed to respond. This kind of thinking punctuates our thoughts and behaviors all of the time.

I bring this up because I’m curious about where these thoughts and behaviors come from. What is their source? And, subsequently, why is it important for any of us to know this stuff?

Now, there are all sorts of ways to craft a response. The psychologist will go at it one way and the neurobiologist somewhat differently. The historian and the economist and the sociologist will all weigh in, as will the theologian and philosopher. Does that mean we need to sift through all of their perspectives and studies in order to address the questions I’m raising?

I don’t think so. At least not to a level that will help us look behind the curtain that is a feature of everyday reality.

With that in mind, I’d like to propose a simple formula for trying to answer any question of how or why we think something or behave in a certain way.

All of us value things. And, I’m really not referring here to things as stuff, like houses, cars, jewelry, nice sound systems and so forth. I’m referring to things that tend not to come and go as readily. We value aspects of life, like relationships and the things that make them work well. We value traits like honesty and courage. We value hard to define features of life like love or beauty or justice. Of course, it’s possible to actually value the inverse of these things but it’s rare for someone to admit it. “I value lying and cowardice. I value hate and ugliness and oppression of the human spirit.”

Regardless, the things we value come from somewhere while also giving rise to action in the form of behavior.

But, in order for the things we value to be transformed into behavior, we all develop a thing we can call guiding principles, which are the way we (to be direct) organize our values in order to live. For instance, if we value truth-telling, we develop guidelines on how to live that way. We try to discern how truth-telling actually works in the real world. A guiding principal can be something like, “Always tell the truth unless by telling the truth you get someone inadvertently killed or cause great emotional harm to another person.” We struggle with both developing guiding principles and living by them. People who have some really solid guiding principles for behavior (derived from fundamental values) but who act contrary to those principles (for whatever reason) are often referred to as hypocrites, a not particularly flattering label.

So far, we have two things that help frame what and how we think and how we organize our lives. These two things help us make sense of our behavior and where that behavior comes from. Those two things are (1) Our values and (2) The principles or guidelines we construct in order to put our values into action.

At this point, we’re beginning to pull away the curtain to see what lies behind. Or, peeling away the layers to determine what the core is made of.

We’re basically moving away from the idea that everything is just random or illogical. In fact, there is a relationship between cause and effect. There is actually meaning and that, by applying the ability to reason, we discover that who we are and what we do is defined by principles which are formed from our values.

Which brings us to a very interesting point. From what or where do we get our values?

Do we merely come back to the position that our values are constructed randomly? That our values are constructed out of fluff? Mist? Shifting sands?

“Yes, I believe in love or beauty or honesty, or courage or justice but I have no reason to actually value those things other than that’s just how I feel.”

“And, of course, my feelings change (this I know from experience) and everyone feels just a little bit differently from everyone else because, you know, everyone is actually a little bit different and grew up in a different place with different experiences so I guess I don’t know where my values come from other than they’re just there. And, to be honest, my values change with time and experience just like feelings do.”

So, is this it? Is this what we find when we pull away the curtain in trying to discover why and how we think things are important and behave accordingly? Or is the curtain still closed?

I say the curtain is still closed. But that’s a matter of philosophy.

What do I mean by that?

I have written about this before. When you peel away all of the layers (basically all of the window dressing), we’re left with just two things. And those two things are actually two sides of the same thing, which we can call a worldview.

The concept of worldview is really, really important.

A worldview is actually a simple device by which we can lump all belief into one place. It’s a way of organizing everything into a single framework, by which everything is made sensical.

Now, let me say that there can be all kinds of worldviews, all kinds of frameworks by which we can organize the way we understand things. In a sense, every different religion or belief system offers a distinct “worldview.” The ways we examine the political landscape, for instance, can be through a worldview where economics reigns supreme or perhaps anthropology or sociology. But, I suggest, with some foundation that, in the end, we come to two doors, each separately beckoning us forward, each offering diametrically opposing worldviews or frameworks that give issue to all of our values and principles, thereby our behaviors and sense of meaning.

Two.