I'm Bringing Skeptic Back

I'd like to start here with a quote from Walter Lippmann,

 "When the first six people we meet agree with us, it is not easy to remember that they may all have read the same newspaper at breakfast." -Public Opinion-1922


Here's the thing, how do you know what you know? Think about that again before you continue reading. How do you know what you know? Are they your actual thoughts and findings, or are they the findings of somebody else? Perhaps they come from your teachers or textbooks. Maybe they come from the television, newspapers or magazines you're reading. Or even more so the music, radio DJs or clergy to whom you listen. And from where did all of those mediums get their information? How do they know what they know?

The information we take in is hardly first hand knowledge. It's all second, third, fourth hand etc... information. The kind of stuff we're just supposed to trust/believe to be true. And unless you're willing to start over from scratch and eliminate your entire base of knowledge then to a certain degree you've got to trust what you're told. This I wholeheartedly believe. We've got to work together if we're going to figure this place out and grow, because we, as individuals, simply do not have enough time to study the entirety of existence. I don't know about you, but my math skills are a bit rusty for me to take on Particle Physics right now, or anytime in the near future. So if I want to know more about the relationship between energy becoming matter and the Higgs Boson particle, I'm going to have to put my trust in the people at CERN. There are just some things (a lot of them, really) that we've got to trust, but that is certainly not everything. 

I'm not sure where or when it happened but the word skeptic was taken away from us and transformed into a word with a completely opposite definition. Well okay, the definition hasn't changed, but the way in which the word skeptic is used has. The word skeptic can be defined as a person inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions, or, one who instinctively or habitually doubts, questions, or disagrees with assertions or generally accepted conclusions. Yet when it comes to modern day skeptics, they are just the opposite! Modern skeptics are those people who believe generally accepted conclusions and disbelieve ideas that may be to the contrary! They are no longer questioning the questionable, they question only the ideas that, as of yet, can not be proven or disproved. It's not hard to find UFO, Big Foot, or New World Order skeptics, in the modern sense of the word, because there is a greater population of the world that does not believe these things to exist. But that, by definition, is not skepticism. There is not one shred of evidence to definitively prove or disprove the existence of any of those. So when someone claims to be a UFO skeptic, they are saying they do not believe in them without having anything to back up their stance, because at this point, none exists. And as I've already stated, that is not skepticism.

So I'm bringing skeptic back. More so than that, I'm taking it back. Because I, as a naturally inquisitive and scientific person, am a true skeptic. The day to day information that we are asked/told/made to accept by corporate media, government officials, organized religion, academia & the scientific community (and I'm talking about the scientific community which is afraid to step out of the box and test new theories which could expand our understanding of the universe but do not do so out of fear of ridicule and loss of funding. That is not science at all, it is politics) is entirely questionable. To sit and accept the things we are told and not question its sources or methods with which they were discovered is both dangerous and lazy. It's easy to play it safe and go with the flow, but you have no idea what is actually true or untrue. At that point you are no longer living your life, you are living a life which is given to you, no, a life that is assigned to you. If you're following the narrative of the day you are doing just that, following. So question everything! Question it all! After all, how do you know what you know? And that's your newest thought.