6

Everyone has both the Knight and the Gardener within him or herself, but tends to emphasize one worldview over the other out of choice, habit, upbringing, religious background, or education. Everyone is primarily one and secondarily the other. You may also function in different modes in different parts of your life, say, as a Knight at work and a Gardener at home.

Worldviews aren’t destiny. Even the most strident Knights function as Gardeners from time to time; and most Gardeners must function as Knights occasionally. And Knights and Gardeners encounter “conversion experiences” to the other orientation for any number of life reasons.

In this book, I seek to outline only the patterns and tendencies of Knights and Gardeners’ worldviews and behavior. These two worldviews are described as opposites—and sometimes presented in extremes—for illustrative purposes and clarity only. In reality, they are not opposites or mutually exclusive, but the two ends of a continuum.

Like all paradigms, this book seeks to explain most of a phenomenon, most of the time.