I’m not going to go on about rubber duckies today on Rubber Ducky Day (You’re welcome); but I do want to reflect a bit on skepticism. Nature or nurture? This is a bit outside of my comfort zone because it occurs to me that this could easily start sounding like “wah, my dick hurts” and that isn’t my intention at all; but I don’t remember believing in stuff. Did I lose that at some point, or have I never had that?
I’m not sure that credulity is intrinsically good (or bad) or desirable, but I seem to lack it; and it has been identified as an issue in more than one failed relationship that I don’t wholly commit. I didn’t grow up in a Norman Rockwell painting. If there had ever been a rock I could have depended upon, would that have made a difference. Going forward wherever my journey takes me, I think it might be useful to have an idea of whether I was born this way or became this way.
I do (feel that I) have a fairly strong and evolving sense of what is right and what is not in terms of how I conduct my life, but don’t feel that gives me a license to advise others how to conduct theirs. People to my (political) left and right both seem to feel that I should be more passionate about my beliefs, but they are just beliefs. Mine feel “correct” to me, but I wouldn’t presume to declare them prescriptive. I think that would also make me an inconsistent skeptic, and I’m going for consistency.
I might be the same thing… So what does that say? I’d like to be a believer if I could but I am honest about myself… i think… so I can’t say I believe in something I do not. I’ve changed a lot in my lifetime though; so who knows about the future.