Welcome to 'Sonder and Skepticism'

Sonder and Skepticism (or SOSK if you just have to shorten it)

This blog was encouraged by a few close friends, and a few others who thought I made good points on my Facebook account. It took me awhile to come around. It’s one thing for me to spout social opinions to friends and acquaintances who know me, another to have the audacity to throw it out to strangers. But heck, why not, eh?

I think it’s important that I talk about my perspective, so that people who come across this blog know where I’m coming from. After all, water means something different to a fisherman living off the coast than it does to a nomad in the desert going from oasis to oasis. We may want to say that water is water, but it exists differently for these two hypothetical individuals. In this way so too do society, politics, and culture affect us differently, holds different truths for us depending on where we stand.

I am a straight (cisgender?) white male in America, who’s had some good experiences abroad from four years in my childhood when my dad worked overseas, a semester abroad, and three years in the Peace Corps. I did not grow up with a religious upbringing, and I call the Denver suburbs more or less home, or at least the place I grew up. These qualities and more do give me biases, they alter the lens in which I view the world, and I recognize that. This blog is meant to talk about issues such as diversity and conflict from this perspective, and not be a one-stop-shop that is meant to capture the entirety of these complex issues and concepts. I encourage anyone reading this to seek out the thoughts of people with different backgrounds and who have different conclusions than me in order to get a better sum of information.

To give a taste of what this blog is about, I want to define the two words I chose for this blog.

“Sonder” is not a recognized word in the English dictionary, but is a beautiful thought devised by the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows found here: http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/

Its definition:  n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own-populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness-an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you'll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

“Skepticism” has a few definitions. The one that is relevant to this blog is as follows: n. the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain. 

I don't promise to read or respond to every comment depending on how many and when people leave a message. However, I will do my best to look for what others agree and disagree with with, and hopefully become wiser myself as I write this blog.