i want to call that an oxymoron.

these days we think of evidence as hard facts.

in science there is the scientific method. an idea possible until it is proven or disproven and even then it may not be 100%, just really really close.

as i understand this in medicine there is the idea of evidence based medicine. you do a study and follow it forward and see what happens. not looking back in time as this is subject to other factors and things you didn’t have in control.

how much of what we know about anything in life is from what we’ve learned or were taught?where did that knowledge come from? you buy a textbook of history and learn about what happened during the year XXXX (or YYYY to be gender equal). then you go to trivia and use this new, hard won information to dazzle and amaze and maybe get a point or two.

was the information accurate? i haven’t looked at a textbook from k-12 in a while but i don’t rememeber if they have any references to where the information came from. someone somewhere says they did some research with musty and dusty tomes and documents and have brought to us this boon. it might actually be factual too. but how truthful is it? by that i mean, did the author present an unbiased view of his research or is that chapter colored with what they thought was the more correct version.

we go through life with a sponge for a brain, constantly soaking up knowledge through all our senses. we make judgements based on this learning. the car in front has a brake light on. that probably means they are slowing down or trying to avoid something. our brains of course try and integrate the speed and other cars and a varied amount of information to know should i swerve out of the lane, brake hard myself or wonder what the next car is i would like if i survive this encounter.

you walk down the street late at night and a group of young looking kids are walking with their hoods pulled over their heads. most people would probably not be wondering what those fine upstanding citizens are doing out late. yes it’s profiling. we profile on a constant basis with constant pre judging but not necessarily in a bad way. if they pass by without incident my heart will start to come back down to normal and eventually i’ll stop looking behind me. if something does happen that is negative, it just adds to the anectdoal life experience and will continue to reinforce the profile in my mind to avoid that situation again.

in the anecdotal evidence, we use our life experiences to make decisions about what we will do or think in a situation.

there is more and more of a push for evidence to prove something. at what point can i tell myself that what i’ve experienced is good enough or maybe even better than something tested. i’ve learned to trust my gut instinct quite often. even the ‘something doesn’t seem right’ sensation gets me out of trouble when some other part of my brain was thinking something else. maybe i find the problem, maybe i don’t but i trust that something felt off and i take the time to slow down and at least take a look at what i was doing.

i hope that my gut stays true and the plethora of life experiences filters through as my own continous prospective study, fine tuning itself hopefully to better and better decisions. some might say i am blinded or double blinded at times but i plan to keep at least one eye open.

-Santa’s Fallen Angel