The Journey of a Passionate Skeptic

speech to grad­u­at­ing stu­dents at Holmes/ZRVTC, Zhengzhou, Chi­na  by Thor May PhD, June 8, 2010

Hon­oured guests, ladies and gen­tle­men, teach­ers, stu­dents, friends, 大家好 (da4  jia1 hao3) !

Con­grat­u­la­tions to the first grad­u­ates of our Inter­na­tion­al Joint Ven­ture with Holmes Insti­tute at Zhengzhou Rail­way Voca­tion­al & Tech­ni­cal Col­lege. I’m real­ly glad to see that you didn’t all run away ^_^. You didn’t give up. You made it!

From today we will go on many dif­fer­ent roads. We can­not see that future. It might be hard, it might be easy. But we will not for­get the friends we made at ZRVTC.

Soon, I too will have to take a dif­fer­ent road. Already, I have come on a long jour­ney to this place. That jour­ney has made me what I am.

You don’t want to be like me! You want to be rich and famous, right? I’m only a poor man. But I will say a few words anyway.

My inter­net home­page is called “The Pas­sion­ate Skeptic”

“Pas­sion­ate” for me means putting my heart into what­ev­er I do. It is the oppo­site of ‘ma3 ma3 hu3 hu3’ [horse horse, tiger tiger] or, as we say in Eng­lish, near enough is good enough.

I like pas­sion­ate peo­ple, even when they are wrong. Their lives have colour, they are not grey. They try to do things well.

It doesn’t mat­ter if you are a pres­i­dent or a street sweep­er, or a house­wife or a stu­dent. It takes all kinds of peo­ple to make the world go around. If you are pas­sion­ate, you will have my respect.

Now what is a skep­tic ? A skep­tic is a per­son who doubts, a per­son who doesn’t believe things.

Is it bad to doubt? Some peo­ple think it is bad to doubt. I think it is good. Believe lit­tle, ques­tion everything.

The true things will still be true. The untrue things, and the untrue peo­ple can­not hide if you ques­tion everything.

Then you will have ener­gy. You will always have a pas­sion to learn, to try ideas and to dis­cov­er new things. You will be a pas­sion­ate skeptic.

Hey, if you hap­pen to get rich and famous too, let me know! Good luck on your jour­ney into the world !

Thor May,
thor­may AT yahoo.com
Zhengzhou, Henan Province, China
June 2010