I. How Did I Get Here?

    My philosophic journey starts in an odd place: with my father. After spending years of my adolescence admiring and looking up to my father, as many do, I ended up becoming disappointed and disillusioned by him around the age of 10. In finding him questionable, I began questioning everything else. I found him deluded and was desperate not to be so myself, so was very keen on learning about my own thinking and expanding awareness (and how even when I think I may not be deluded I still can be).

I've also always been curious, detail oriented, inquisitive, always seeking understanding, successively pulling back layer after layer of framework, going deeper and deeper. The deep diving brought me to epistemology before I knew the word “epistemology.” In my efforts to understand, many contradictory ideals were able to be held in my mind at one time. I was seeking information on what to believe, such is part of the nature of life; trying to have some inkling and understanding of what's going on in our present existence. In trying to be understanding more than anything else, I found myself apparently outside the normal sandbox of common cognition. I thought outside the box, seeing many other boxes I could conceptually hop into and explore, but also noticed that outside the initial box, surrounding it and all the others, was yet another box, and so on; nested “boxes.”

I cut my teeth on Greek and Vedic philosophy while also having a general interest in theology, noticing and acknowledging the impact of religion in general on the world as a whole. Through Vedic philosophy, I came to Buddhist philosophy as well, and with these two coupled, decided that I'd pursue enlightenment. As the years went on, skepticism became my main method for achieving such: finding balance and stable grounding of self in the free-fall of potential unknowing, being detached even from knowing, which we as creatures can't seem to help but attach to. I know I know nothing (Socratic Paradox) and I don't know if anything can be known. There seems to be a novel freedom and potential transcendence here in my view.

There were a few sayings that were developed in high school, such as, "understanding is believing enough," and the questions, "how could I be wrong," "what are my biases here," and "am I being honest with or deluding myself?" These among others I feel primed me for skepticism and they are questions that have always kept in mind to some degree, especially in considering what I know, or at least, think I know.

In college, after my time at the music school didn't work out, I defaulted to philosophy. I already had an ongoing interest and study and I didn't want to drop out. I was introduced to so many ideas. One thing I noticed; over time, use of various philosophies change. How can we be so confident to say we know in the midst of such change? It's as though a thinker assess a philosophy from the past, finds what they may consider flaws and then develops a better philosophy. It is then delivered with conviction, often in the guise of finality of exploring said topic. And then it all happens again... and seems to be the case in many fields.

This changing of view within a given field or purview of thought is known in some cases as a paradigm shift.

One of the biggest conundrums I noticed was the difficulty in defining knowledge. There still doesn't seem to be a consensus on what it entails entirely, even to this day, and we can see the debate with regard to AI, in which a new parameter of intelligence is posed after some other parameter has been covered. How do we know when we know what knowledge is anyway? There have been many convictions held that weren't the case.

There came a point where I didn't find any positivist view convincing and noticed that even if I did, being convinced doesn't mean that I know something that is true. Many individuals speak with conviction and can be found to be in error. So, a prose of conviction seems should never sway whether or not I concede to any given point. It should be about the point being made and how it's made. We all want to believe we are right and that we have true beliefs. But some things are outside any methodology of verification, and are, often times admittedly, taken purely on faith (though, it will be covered how the systems we use for knowing also require our faith). Also, no one knows everything, and so everyone has some "false" beliefs, but doesn't know what they are. If they knew that a belief was false, they wouldn't believe it. Another of the reason I had a hard time being “convinced” is, while understanding a particular prose, I could always find a counterargument or could move slightly outside the given system to find faults in the prose being put forth.

It was also in college when I started using psychedelics. Often basking in philosophic rumination of musings that seemed to lead me further and further in the skeptical trajectory. Utterly fascinated by their power of mind altering, making me wonder at times "what would happen if our senses were slightly augmented differently? How would I see the world then? How would we explain the world at that point and how would we feel?" Psychedelics offered me full entrance into assessing my own thinking and perception.

I can't help but notice the double edge to this and the potential negative ways in which it has impacted and influenced me. I already manage severe depression, but in conjunction with skepticism is a recipe for an affinity to nihilism. There's a lacking of direction, fulfillment and meaning in some key regards. This is in part to not valuing my own subjective perspective enough (and with depression, not myself enough either), always looking to be more and more objective if I desire to move closer and closer to "truth." Something that also drives a detrimental pull towards perfectionism. The truth so far however is, "I don't know, but I am aware how it seems to me." Me being honest with myself.

Despite some of the negatives, a journey of this sort leads one (or at least me) into a space where there is no dialogue, but more just a state of being, for even ascribing words to an objective attempt detracts from its objectivity. I find parallels to Buddhism in contexts like these with skepticism; in suspending judgment if lack of knowing has already been admitted. Spiritual endeavors have continued to be explore regardless of my skeptical stances, because as already stated I don't know, so give myself to experience to see what happens.

As I have aged and moved away from the academic mindset (though I'd love to pursue my Master's, I'm not trying to go into debt for something I have no clue where to go with), and my philosophic interactions have lessened, my ideals and conception about skepticism have remained throughout. It has become a stoic practice for me, for if I admit that I don't know at some level about all things, then there is nothing to attach myself to. This is the theory. It's not always the case in practice because of the powerful seeming of pragmatic reality. Like with many spiritual traditions, practice is the progenitor of learning in employing this method in my regular life.

For some clarity, I am in no way devaluing the sciences and philosophies that we use today to lead our apparent lives, moves us forward technologically, and potentially enhances our understanding. That would be antithetical to my view of skepticism because it would be asserting a positivist claim, which also comes under the same scrutiny as any other claim of the same nature. Rather, I shoot for understanding, doing as best as possible to leave preconceived notions behind to attain the full flavor of the topic in question, especially since I have admitted I don't know; then jump in and find out for myself (what I call phenomenological skepticism and will cover later). If information from some other modality seems appropriate to use (like using math in certain aspects of physics) I will do so. This also applies to more esoteric and mystical concentrations as well. So, I have a deep appreciation and affinity towards the sciences (physics, chemistry, biology, etc), philosophy (epistemology, ethics, philosophy of mind, existentialism, logic (and math, they go hand in hand in my mind), etc), and mysticism (Vedic, Buddhist, Hermetic, Egyptian, Shamanistic, etc). I use them. I just don't put absolute faith in them, and am rarely surprised when something in our overall understanding changes (such is the history of science; a history of change). I also have various opinions about them, but always remember, I could be wrong. I seem to have a day-to-day life to live, so flow through it in a manner of "what seems to be most likely the case in this overall seeming." There is an attempt at entertaining all “relevant and convincing” possibilities (which is pretty arbitrary). I wouldn't say, “this is the way things are,” but rather try to state, “this is how things seem to be,” to state broadly.

Feeling as though something is missing, but here's a bit of what brought me to work with skepticism as a thought modality and paradigm. Much of what has been introduced will be expanded upon in subsequent posts.

Apologies on the tardiness. Life gets in the way as well as my own hangups. But thank you for reading all the same.

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