Skeptic:

Skeptic: 2-13-2017

Growing up, I was a skeptic for some unknown reason.  That is not to say that I was cynical.  I just noticed that there were so many competing, and mutually exclusive explanations given for the way the world worked, the most accepted of which, having no evidence to back it.  I realized that I had to try to understand the world for myself.

It can be difficult to get guidance in life philosophy when one builds their own framework for understanding the world around them.  I am a big fan of building your own framework.

Many of the inspirational books and teachings about dealing with difficult situations use religion and higher power as a foundation on which the rest of the philosophy is based.  But when this is not the way you understand the world and the people around you, there is an emptiness, disconnection.

Occasionally, I come across someone who has completely built their own framework of understanding and it somewhat aligns with mine.  I must be rather odd as this seems to not happen all that often.  Actually, it may have less to do with a similar understanding of the world but more to do with not taking any leaps of knowledge just because someone said so.  Trying to understand things in the most logical terms.

We all build a model of the world around us in our brains.  Some people get more use out of ready made templates built by the society they grow up in.  Some people like to code from scratch.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both of which many a debate could be had.   I do get a great amount of joy out of the model of the world that my brain has built for itself.   Whenever I feel the need for a little awe in my life, I can just look and the wondrous complication of the cells in a plant that I am looking at.  The cells arranging themselves to perform the chemical reactions and defences necessary to survive in the strategy that that plant species has unwittingly decided to adopt.  Or perhaps the size of the universe we see when looking up.  I don’t think that very many people actually comprehend nor appreciate the size of the universe that our planet floats in.