Sometimes I wonder what's distinct about my approach to life. After all, I feel... out of alignment with how things are usually done. And of course it is no one thing that defines anyone. I'm a person, not an idea.

But here's one effort, in a nutshell:

I believe there is a game humans have evolved to play. Largely it is a social game based on instincts about hierarchy and trust and what to believe.

I believe many of these instincts are out of date and have a tendency to hold us back as a group and even as individuals.

I don't have a word for this belief, but let's call it anti-instinctualism, or psychosocial skepticism.

To look at one aspect of it in practice, I feel I am not very "successful" because I don't believe in the metric. I could be living my life for material and social success, and if I were, my life would look radically different; I choose otherwise. Others see me as not very successful and assume I am trying and failing to succeed on that level. Even I have a tendency to believe that, in that I have the usual human psychosocial quirks. When I have access to money, I feel better. When I am broke, I feel worse. A smile from a pretty person can change my afternoon. When others agree with me, I feel good. When others disagree with me, I feel bad.

When people talk about "not caring what anyone thinks," I think they are also trying to get past this primitive hierarchical psychosocial programming we've all inherited.

That isn't the way I prefer to think of it, but I understand.

I think my skepticism runs deeper and is more nuanced.

It is, for example, why I refuse to unfriend people when friends get in fights. No one's insults or punches will be reversed by a Facebook unfriend from me. I am skeptical of the common, impassioned assumption that ostracism is the best move for virtual bystanders. I think in most cases it does nothing useful, only cut off lines of information and reinforce preexisting attitudes. If someone gave me evidence contradicting this, I would look into it with fascination and would quite likely change my view. But people don't, because they are not operating on evidence, it seems. It seems they are operating on instinct - instinct that I consider outdated and all too often unexamined.

Those are a couple examples of "psychosocial skepticism."

I don't think our evolved instincts are good enough. I think we need to look at them more carefully and more often and talk about them better.

That's a way I'm different, and even a reason I might seem "off."

For me, "doing my best" means second-guessing and often disagreeing with what seems unexamined and harmful, even if it seems to upset others that I pull on these threads. I believe - rightly or wrongly - that I am helping, in my own little way, to make the world a better place.