I have argued for several years that each person’s worldview
comes from his or her mother because the mother is usually the person who
teaches us language. Since language has
our worldview imbedded in it, ipso facto, our mothers pass on their worldviews
to us. Worldview is matrilineal.
More people I talk to are beginning to agree with this proposition but I am frequently asked what is a “worldview.”
To come to an understanding of worldview I go back to an
article I wrote on dichotomies years ago. Dichotomies are those aspects of our lives that are incomprehensible to
people on the other side of the dichotomy. I found nine such dichotomies. An example is gambling. Gamblers can’t understand why someone would ignore the fun and excitement of
gambling and non-gamblers can’t understand why someone would deliberately lose
their money, which is inherent in gambling.
I have only a vague idea of the basic categories of worldview. I sense that it is structural, like tent poles. I know from social thought that ideas, metaphors and concepts are layered on each person's worldview in an hierarchical form.
My first approximation of what constitutes a worldview has
the following three tent poles for Americans: (pole #1) people see the world as inherently
ambiguous or not, if not it is because there is a god. (God can be abstract as in first cause or a source
of evil such as money or class; what we find among Marxists and Liberals). (pole #2) People see the world as charged with sex
and sexuality or not. (pole #3) People want to have possessions and will work to get
as much of them as they can or not. 
The second tent pole, sexuality, I am convinced must to be part of a worldview because it has Puritanism layered on it and Puritanism provides a core dynamic for language and behavior.
I have much less confidence that #3 is a tent pole because the drive for possessions could be deduced from the first tent pole in some way that I don’t see.
I have not included values or dispositions in the tent poles that make up worldviews. Values such as honesty, trust or loyalty seem to be independent. I am also leaving out dispositions such as optimism and self-reflection. There may be other axis and I hope to find more. Suggestions?