Worldviews 101, Part 3

Because Type 2 people tend to believe that human nature is flexible and can be changed for the better, it follows that the right circumstances (read: government-imposed laws, regulations, morals, programs) can bring about a happy and healthy society, if not paradise on earth. The Marxists used to propose that eventually government itself would end after the social and economic order was appropriately reformed. Unfortunately, more than 150 million people have died during the process of trying to implement earthly nirvana along Marxist lines.

One of the few remaining Marxist experiments is North Korea, where the situation is so dire and the starving people so miserable that the Left in the United States has begun to claim that DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) is actually a Fascist state instead of a communist state. True, pictures of Lenin and Stalin have been recently removed from public buildings in North Korea, but the cult of personality (compare Mao in China) seems to fit the communist-society-on-the-way-to-paradise format, as does the idea that a fearless leader is the one to take everyone there.

The point is, however, that Type 2 people are utopians, who believe that controlling the structure of the world (society and nature) will bring about goodness, or at least alleviate much of society's suffering. Because type 2 people frequently either mock religion outwardly or relegate it to the privacy of one's home, they are unwilling to advocate personal reformation as a solution to societal or family problems.

For example. What can be done about the high percentage of children born out of wedlock and raised by only their mothers?
Type 1 response: Improve education about the risks of illegitimacy, advocate moral instruction, hold fathers accountable for their children, develop community support for marriage and family and discourage damaging behaviors.
Type 2 response: Offer welfare support to the single mother, avoid moral instruction or community support ideas, because those will be "blaming the victim," Implement government programs to assist the (now) poor women--who have three kids and no job.

Type 1 people, as mentioned, often worship God--together with all that implies about the supernatural. They look upon the process of metamorphosis, the complexity of the simplest single-cell organisms, or even the amazing qualities of water as testimony to a Creator.
Type 2 people may also believe in God. But both those who do and those who don't frequently channel their religious emotions into protecting and preserving the natural world. It's  something akin to the nature worship of old. Environmentalism, activism over climate change, opposition to oil pipelines, all these kinds of things reflect Type 2 people's concerns.

So, when someone wonders why an extra billion dollars needs to be spent to reroute a highway in order to protect the habitat of a rare frog or bird, you can understand the trade off if you understand it on the basis of the Type 2's religious commitment to the environment.