It’s been a bit of a roller coaster year, but then, when are years anything else?

The one lesson that I am constantly reminded of year after year is that us humans are so damned… human – with our limited experience being all we have, our ability to be so irrational a lot of the time, and our stubbornness and our reluctance to hold our hands up and say ‘I’m wrong’. So, here are four lessons that I learnt from 2012 – some came about from mistakes I made, and some were things I had known all along that had just become static noise in an endless sea of noisy ideas.

#1 – Be a better investigator

“I learnt from Joe Nickell, it is easy to sit at home and speculate as to what is happening and what the intentions of the people involved are, but you very rarely get things right by that process of investigation. It isn’t until you actually visit places and see the areas involved through your own eyes that you can start to get a feel for what is what. It isn’t until you speak to the people involved that you can start to understand what has happened. I have become so involved in the race to be the first to comment on the latest paranormal news story that I’ve really lost  a taste for what good investigative behaviour is, and I aim to remedy that immediately.” [from: The Monster Men]

In March I went monster hunting with Joe Nickell in Windermere and Loch Ness, in what was probably one of the best weeks of my life so far. Not only did I get to meet and work with Joe, who is a legend himself, but I got to visit some incredible places and meet some wonderful people, and I was made to rethink the way in which I approach paranormal cases in the future. There was, for me at least, a real sense of adventure throughout the week as we discovered leads and previously unheard tips about what may have caused monster sightings. As someone whose research was done mainly online it was an experience I had often missed out on, and something I promised to remedy as soon as I got home.

You can read more about my trip with Joe Nickell by clicking here. As soon as I got home from that trip in March I took a fresh approach to a case I was working on at the time and decided to do some investigating on the ground which led me to solve the mystery. Later in the year the eagerness some skeptics have to dismiss or solve paranormal cases without supporting research and data would be demonstrated with the latest Loch Ness Monster photo. Although it turned out to be a hoax, many skeptics dismissed it as one without any evidence. So much of my research is done offline now and it’s so much more fun and rewarding.

#2 – Talk & listen to young people

It showed me that the uncritical media coverage of these subjects was reaching a younger audience, and that these kids in front of me were well equipped with the critical thinking skills needed to assess the claims such coverage makes because of things such as Camp Quest. Yet there are children out there that probably don’t have those skills. There are probably children out there who are like the younger me, getting terrified at the idea than panthers are prowling in the wild and that ghosts lurk in the shadows… [from: My trip to Camp Quest: Engaging with Children]

Earlier this year I was invited to speak at Camp Quest UK about ghosts – my talk was titled ‘ghosts on the brain’ and explored and demonstrated how ‘What we remember isn’t always what happened’ and ‘What we see isn’t always what was there’. The children in the audience blew me away with their interaction and their questions and their willingness to not only learn new things, but to question what they didn’t understand and to answer their peers questions too. My time at CampQuest made me think back to my childhood when my questions were answered with nonsense ideas (ghosts at home, god at school), and part of me wished that something like CampQuest had been around when I was younger. Not only to rid me of my irrational fears, but also to help me learn to think critically from a young age. I think that’s a really key thing for young people – and it’s something I wasn’t taught in school during science lessons either. There’s never a lack of adults thinking it is their right to decide what their child believes, but armed with the right tools, the right information, and allowing them the freedom to explore ideas for themselves might just set young people on the track to examining things rationally.

#3 – Never be too certain

When you speak with such certainty about how right and moral you are in relation to your critics without considering the possibility that you may be missing a nuance or two, you cannot hold any sort of moral or intellectual high ground. – Barbara Drescher, on oversimplifaction & certainty, ICBS Everywhere blog

Earlier this year I wrote a blog post about how I got caught up in a lot of drama within the skeptical blogosphere without being as skeptical of myself and those I agreed with as I was of those I disagreed with. I was guilty of sometimes speaking with the certainty Barbara Drescher mentions in her post ‘on oversimplification & certainty‘. It wasn’t an instant realisation either. I observed a number of instances where the behaviour of those I had been agreeing with towards people they didn’t agree with made me stop in my tracks with shock. There are certain irrational behaviours and tactics that I cannot condone, and it saddened me to discover that people I held in high regard didn’t feel the same. I realised I had thrown my lot in with people I thought I had a lot in common with, when in reality I didn’t once past certain ideas. My approach to skepticism was not like theirs at all, and it was a huge wake up call for me.

#4 – Be hungry for change

“There’s no need to sharpen my pencils anymore, my pencils are sharp enough. Even the dull ones will make a mark” Ze Frank, An invocation for begginings, Youtube

I’m not going to pretend that I can change the world, but I know that I can make small changes sometimes. 2012 started off with a bang for me when the Advertising Standards Authority agreed with my complaint about the claims a group of faith healers called ‘Healing on the Streets’ were making. They told the group they couldn’t continue to make the claims the way they were. The huge media coverage of the ruling, the appeal, and the final decision in the case was never expected, but it did send out a really important message, and it caused a lot of debate – from regional news to international news outlets, radio stations, television shows, and more. All of this happened because this blogger made a complaint to an independent regulator as a British citizen because I felt something wasn’t quite right with the claims on the groups leaflets. It isn’t the first time a complaint of mine to the ASA has been successful, but it’s certainly the complaint that generated the most attention to the fact that bogus claims wont go unchallenged.

Life is, I think, about knowing your limits – and recognising those limits as things to be broken.

In 2013 I shall: make noise, laugh, listen, talk, think, learn, change things, and be hungry for more. Join me?

My problem has been jumping to the defense of other people while naively presuming they’d do the same because they care when they actually don’t, it’s been presuming that others are above censoring the people they get harassed by just as I am, it’s thinking that I’m like other people simply because we share a slightly similar experience from twitter users and bloggers who’ve nothing better to do that fill their time with negative comments about others. My problem is thinking that ‘social justice’ means more than just ‘me and my friends’ to others as it does for me, it’s not wanting revenge on ‘haters’ like others do and being surprised at the behaviour of people I thought better of, it’s presuming others are able to look outwards and not just inwards about harassment they experience like I have.

My problem is other people’s problems. I guess my problem ends today.

I am a person. So are you, and all of those around us – that we know and don’t know – are people as well. But isn’t it strange how easy it is to forget that when you can’t see their faces, or when you don’t interact in person? Isn’t it easy to sit at a computer and rant, rave, and project your dislike of ideas, before remembering that it’s not a computer you’re subjecting to that negativity, but a person. Isn’t it easy to turn someone into a snarling demon, or a sniveling child, when your computers separate you?

On Sunday I attended TEDx Bradford on Avon. The final speaker was Pip Utton with a talk titled ‘In the beginning was the word’, and it caused me to have a revelation of sorts. His talk wasn’t religious in nature – it focused on language, words, and communication, and the revelation I had was probably more a moment of clarity during which I realised that my words aren’t always used how I want them to be used. By me, as much as others.

Utton told the audience that if there was one thing to be taken away from his talk it was that saying something positive to others might be something we forget in a day or two, but that our kind words could stay with that person for their whole life. Words are that powerful and can have that much of an impact. As a blogger my words are permanently online (even if a post is removed, it still hangs around the internet like a ghost), and I realised that my words could stay with people for their whole lives, and that was a thought that scared me a bit because I haven’t always been the person I want to be, here on my blog – and I know why. It’s become clear over the last two months, you see.

Online you can become involved in debates when they don’t involve you, and you can project other peoples negative experiences onto your own without even realising it. Before you know it, you’re perception of your own experience is coloured with the negative perception others have of their similar experiences. Only they’re them and not you.

The injustices effecting other people in society are problems that we want to eradicate, but online, the dialogue moves along so quickly that you can find yourself caught up in the current and suddenly speaking as though you have experience of that which you wish to eradicate, when in reality what you have is an outsiders view of the problem.

It’s also easy to think that all of those who agree with you about an injustice think in the same way as you do, and that when they say things they mean those things in the same way that you do. That’s something I thought regarding the use of the word misogyny – I thought other bloggers were using it to describe certain behaviour in the same way that I was, when it turns out they probably weren’t. I thought the same of mansplaining  – a horrific turn of word that I thought others were using jokingly, when it turns out they’re probably not. It was something I saw directed at men who I happened to agree with on a subject recently, whose whole input was disregarded because of their gender, by people I thought I respected.

Hmmm, I pondered…

It’s similar to the experience I had after I blogged at The Heresy Club about the Page 3 debate. I never expected to be told by other people that I was ‘championing my own oppression’. I had obviously been too hopeful that people would see sense – or the lack of it – in the petition being discussed, as I did. Alas, they didn’t.

I’ve seen friends used as pawns in games and have been saddened by the actions of those I thought were rational people, and recently I was saddened to see my words misrepresented by users of the Atheism+ forum when, after commenting about a thread that I thought was particularly illogical on their forum, some users twisted what I had said to make it seem as though I had told Atheism+ to ‘fuck off and die‘ or that I despised them completely. I did not and do not. It was a ’them and us’ attitude, if you will. I can never take seriously people who use absolutes when absolutes are not… absolute.

I get why they want their safe space and, although I have some reservations about the Atheism+ brand, I respect their decisions. It’s a shame that respect couldn’t be mutual.  I do want social justice, I do want equality, and society-wide respect, but I don’t want these things because I’m an atheist, or because I’m a secularist, or because I’m a feminist – I want them because I’m just that sort of person.

A final thought. Another speaker at TEDx Bradford on Avon – Veronica Hannon – spoke about creating communication that resonates and how we need to turn inwards to investigate who we are before projecting ideas. I’ve come to understand that I haven’t been doing enough of this. In the future I’m going to be a lot more careful about who I throw my lot in with, I’m going to think more carefully before acting on impulse, and I’m going to ask more questions of myself and others. I’m going to spread my skepticism equally to those who sound the same as I do, and those that don’t, and I’m not going to jump through hoops for anybody other than myself. I’m just that sort of person, the type who got a little lost along the way and thinks she might finally be back on the right track.

We’ll see.