Never have I felt so humbled, insignificant, and at the same time connected to everything than I do with a scientific worldview. Hopefully, I will start even more connections as this process goes on. For the next few weeks, I am going to start the exercise of writing new posts on the regular. One every other day. This first post will be a short story about my background, why I decided to start this blog, and what I hope to get out of it.
There are countless blogs out there, and you pick almost any subject, there are hundreds of them dedicated to it. So, that begs the next question, what will make my blog site different from the plethora of science and skeptics blogs?
Firstly, I wanted to do something that would make a difference. Something that would matter. Initially, I just wanted to put things in my head out there and found a larger community of like-minded individuals that inspired me to do better. I felt a gained responsibility to help others not be taken advantage of and grew into a consumer advocate. It felt like it was my civic duty. These are the things I feel to be most important and promoting scientific literacy and critical thinking are causes I believe to be worth following. This is my way of doing something to make the world to be a better place by helping others. These are things that changed my life and I know they will do the same for others.
I had the unique experience of growing up going between a major metropolitan city to a lowly reservation. Throughout my childhood, I would visit my family on and around the reservation during my breaks from school. Eventually, I spent a great deal of time living there. After being in these somewhat compete opposite places, I still feel like I am not fully here or there, but still wondering somewhere in between.
In a long round about way that brings me to why I decided to start this blog in the first place and what I hoped to get out of it. While everyone has their own unique experience and perspectives, there are not many Native American scientific skeptics. Even less Apache, Navajo, and Hopi skeptics. As am I.
From the beginning, my intentions were to show my work of how I began the transition from a spiritual person seeking answers to the meaning of life and the universe and obsessed with knowing God, to the heathen obsessed with science and reason that I am today. In the midst of all that, I was also forced to confront all the tribal belief systems that were just as big a part of my personal identity as the Christian one. So, maybe this is my way of talking to my younger self and giving the advise I needed to shorten the journey and better filter out all the noise. A way to save people from wasting it on the unlikely; paranormal, supernatural, Qi fields, alternative medicine, and eastern medicine modalities. Instead of starting my investigations on what we don't know, I flipped the script and focused in on what we do know.
Thus began my adventure traveling through hundreds of years of science history! But, I will save that story for another time.
