I am reading a book about skepticism and belief. I was reading the book on my way to some extended time away from my normal context for life and into the natural world (outdoors). I awoke one day there thinking it is difficult to be too skeptical when you're out in nature.
I then wondered how true this would be for the earliest settlers in the natural world. Nature, in spite of all its beauty and splendor, can also seem quite harsh at times - indifferent even - to our more human concerns (ask many of the earliest settlers to North America).
I wonder if my experience of nature is often conditioned by a participation in it from the position of comfort. I go and visit it, but I don't live in it. I go out in it, but come back to a warm shower, prepared food, and a comfortable bed. Even the wood we enjoyed in our fireplace that night before was already cut (and neatly stacked). What if all the effort of food and comfort, even survival, were up to me? What would my disposition to nature be then? What, in that arrangement, would my level of skepticism be?
I guess I just don't know. But, I have thought since about what seems to be a way in which our world (as opposed to the natural one) operates on the premise that we can control for many things -- comfort, convenience, predictability, etc. It seems to me that life in the natural world would require something else of me -- cooperation with the natural order of things...me joining it, rather than it joining me, etc. Is that orientation part of my reaction to it now...the compelling forces of its beauty, strength, order (even in its own chaos), longevity, quietness, pace, etc.
And, how would all of that affect something like skepticism? I tend to wonder if a lot of skepticism is related to the problems that come from human-beings, rather than nature. I could be wrong about this, but I wonder....
