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I was wondering, do you think sokka witnessing yue turning into the moon spirit ever had an effect on his view of spirits and the 'skeptical' approach to mysteries he sometimes takes during the series? (not that science and spirituality are opposed, necessarily, but sokka tends towards a more skeptical approach before considering spirits/supernatural are involved in a mystery). would he lean into skepticism, away from it, or more generally reconsider his position on spirits in light of events?
this is a really good question because i feel like i’ve seen a lot of people point out, usually facetiously, that it shouldn’t make sense that sokka is a skeptic considering he’s friends with the avatar, spent a day in the spirit world, watched his girlfriend turn into the moon, found wan shi tong’s library, and generally has seen some shit. like... what exactly is he skeptical of? y’know?
well.
sokka would have to be willfully ignorant not to believe in spirits. he’s quite literally been to the spirit world (not that that ever got explored and that makes me salty beyond belief where is sokkated away, the movie, dammit! but i digress). sokka knows that spirits exist. he can see the moon.
what sokka is skeptical of is not the existence of spirits, but the idea that spirits are mystical, and thus, we should deify them. sokka believes in spirits because he’s kissed (at least) one (we don’t know what happened in the spirit world ok), but what sokka does not believe in is mysticism. mysticism runs directly counter to sokka’s entire worldview, which is essentially boils down to the scientific method. (for more on that, i recommend this delightful lecture by feynman. don’t worry it’s only 10 mins.)
sokka knows that spirits exist well enough, but he doesn’t think that they can’t be explained, simply that he does not yet know the explanation for their behavior. the reason that the spirits are revered by humans is because they supposedly work in mysterious ways, but sokka doesn’t inherently respect the spirits (he respects yue, but that’s not the same) because he thinks that’s bullshit; the spirits must operate on a plane of logic that we have simply yet to understand.
but sokka is aware that there’s plenty he doesn’t understand (like socrates). if anything, his familiarity with the spirits makes him more of a skeptic, because what he is skeptical of is the notion that they are exotic and intangible, and he knows that that’s not the case. sure, maybe the physical laws of the spirit world are different from those in their dimension (that’s the only explanation for bending, after all), but that doesn’t mean it can’t be explained through math, only that humans have yet to discover it. (and if anyone could, it’s sokka.)