Welcome to Mindful Sceptic, your expert guide to navigating life in our modern world with clarity, compassion, and courage.
Each issue tackles an aspect of a global challenge through the lens of curiosity, critical thinking and evidence.
Subscribe for a weekly challenge that
confronts, with myth-busting analyses, the most important environmental issues
will focus your ability to balance curiosity, critical thinking and evidence with open-minded awareness.
prompts you to explore diverse viewpoints and assumptions
help you transform insight into impact
If this sounds like it will help ease anxiety, frustration and overwhelm, subscribe for free to get a regular dose of courage.
So why would you sign up?
If you are perplexed, frustrated, and often overwhelmed by information overload, fed up with misinformation, narcissism, and incompetence, and concerned about how the complexity of modern life pressures the environment, then I hear you. I am, too.
When the socials are full of dross and the traditional media blunted, it’s easy to be frustrated, confused, and feel powerless as the sheer scale of global challenges dwarfs personal efforts. I’ve felt mental fatigue set in, accompanied by paralysing indecision that stems from not knowing which actions genuinely make a difference personally and for everyone.
I still feel all this despite being trained to know about it.
My solution was to become a mindful sceptic.
Hi, I’m Mark, an ecologist, not a green one. I have built companies, held academic posts at four universities, won teaching awards, and spent a decade in Africa. I have been blessed with innate curiosity and privileged to be educated as a critical thinker and practice it as a professional scientist for over four decades.
I’m also a sceptic and more than a bit annoyed that this moniker has been hijacked to make me out as a Dick rather than the curious, critical thinker that the term should imply.
So, along with my buddy Chris, we set about changing our perception of being a sceptic.
Chris is also an ecologist, a restoration one. When not passionately managing land, being awarded Landcarer of the Year, trawling the evidence on nutrition, carefully advising NGOs and government, or growing plants in his commercial nursery, he chats with me about science, ecology, the human condition, and, increasingly, scepticism.
We realised that we needed to be more sceptical, only with positivity.
We wanted to use curiosity and critical thinking as constructive tools because the research told us they could improve decision-making, reduce anxiety, enhance communication skills, resilience against misinformation, and personal empowerment. It made good sense to be sceptical, especially when shouted at by the evidence-free opinions our devices ping at us all day.
But scepticism needed softening. It needed to be less analytical—a bit less nerdy and annoying.
After a few beers, we came up with Mindful Scepticism, a combination of scepticism's excellent curiosity, critical thinking, and evidence evaluation with mindfulness's present-moment awareness, nonjudgmental observation, and intellectual humility.
Mindful scepticism balances curiosity, critical thinking and evidence with open-minded awareness.
Enthused by what we found, I wrote a book, Being a Mindful Sceptic, that captures the core ideas, and Chris and I wrote a series of Mindful Sceptic Guides that apply curiosity and critical thinking to bust a few myths about sustainability, diet, food security, conservation, and, especially, growing food.
Now, we want to share some of the skills, tools, and ideas in a digestible newsletter so that you can become a mindful sceptic, too.
Here is our mission.
…to explain mindful scepticism and share the skills to cut through information overload and navigate complex global issues; skills that will give you the courage to bust some myths and make confident, well-informed decisions.
We would love for you to sign up for the free newsletter and receive a weekly digest of tips on becoming a mindful sceptic.
If you’re not ready to become a mindful sceptic, no worries. We understand.
But you may know someone who would benefit from some courage through intellectual growth, personal development, and meaningful action. If you do, we would be delighted if you shared this page with them.
Either way, go well, one critical insight at a time.
Still curious?
Great, you are already on the way to becoming a mindful sceptic.
