Like many cultures, Belgium has quite a unique and diverse worldview set
up around the country. Ever since Belgium became a country it has always been
deeply rooted with a rich religious heritage primarily in Christianity,
particularly Catholicism, but other religious beliefs and practices are
represented as well, such as Protestant, Judaism, Islam, etc. Although, Belgium
might seem like a complete religious nation, it guarantees freedom of religion
for all practices, including atheism and any other form of non-religious
beliefs. For example, within the last decade, 31% of the population associate
it with being non-religious, with agnostics and atheists included in the group.
Over the years, Belgium has advanced to having more of a secular
worldview. In other words, it is known as a religious perspective that
emphasizes humans as the ultimate norm for determining truth and value. It maintains
a naturalistic perspective, while separating religion from other forms of human
existence. Furthermore, this advances to remove religion from public life while
still promoting various religious practices but keeping them private.
There are a lot of
cultural assumptions that Belgium has adapted to, these are roughly just a few,
including:
- Reserved, serious, and hardworking
- Law-abiding
- Punctual
- Individualism
- Persistent
- Generous and charitable
- Thrifty
Since Belgium is
divided into three separate regions (Walloons, Flanders and Brussels-Capital)
each has its own expectations and expressions in daily life. For example, the
two primary business cultures (French and Dutch) determine how business meetings begin, Walloons (French) prefer socializing before getting down to
business, while Flemish (Flanders-Dutch) are more likely to go immediately into
a meeting. Furthermore, Walloon culture creates a more formal environment with
strong role identification and free emotional expression, while Flemish environment
will be more participative and informal, but emotionally reserved. Overall,
Belgians are somewhat reserved about their private life and heavily respect
privacy in and outside the work environment. However, they do seek personal
relationships for trust in business.
Finally, the ideas of death are heavily
supported by their religious beliefs. With there being many different religious
beliefs and practices in the country there are so many different ideas/theories
of death that people believe in. One of the most common is the Christianity
faith, where there is life after death, and you could go to heaven or hell or
somewhere in between (purgatory).
Belgium is not considered as a homogenous
worldview as it is quite diverse in its culture and surrounding environment. With
Belgium having three separate regions it’s almost like having three different
communities just living in the same country. Despite Belgium having three
regions, they still believe in similar practices, they might do things
differently on a day-to-day basis, but the overall values and beliefs are
pretty much the same.
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