Starting out

So I've always been a skeptic, of everything. I questioned authority and lamented the lack of humanity in my life. Growing up in the poorer neighborhoods of Seattle and Las Vegas, one learns that the only way to survive is to think about oneself and how to get out of the streets. Some people decide to stay street smart only; they learn to adapt to the violence and anger and frustration of being poor and instead of fighting to get out, they stay and stop fighting against the powers that leave them in that cycle of poverty.

But when you're a skeptic, or have any sense of intelligence, you strain against that cycle; you do everything you can to get out with education, but nowadays even getting an education leaves those skeptics in piles of debt with no guarantees of getting out of college with a job that can pay for the degree. It can often make one wonder what the point is of getting an education and trying to break the cycle, when the cycle just comes back and sucks us back into that vortex with no real way out seen.

But there is a point: knowledge is power. Knowledge is strength. Knowledge is everything.

The problem is that unless this knowledge helps get us out of the cycle of poverty, the stone broke skeptics, those who are living on little to no money and trying to get ahead, we are stuck and it can leave us prone to depression and social deprivation. We are unable to socialize with other skeptics unless we live in urban areas, because we do not have the means to find other skeptics. Unlike church-goers, we have less access to social networks of free-thinkers save for the internet, and we have less access to social services and outreach programs.

Thus, StoneBroke Skeptic has been born. Here is where I will talk about what it's like for the less affluent atheists, humanists and free-thinkers, and ways some of us have learned to adapt, etc. Nothing is off-limits for discussion, whether it be talking about stretching a budget, coping with WIC, how to access secular social service programs, etc. Sometimes I'll talk about personal stuff, sometimes it will be more general. No matter what, it's always going to be from the slightly sardonic, stone broke skeptic viewpoint.