I know that I'm into psychology, sociology, and biology.
There are 8 areas of psychology that interest me: cognitive, cultural, developmental, evolutionary, experimental, positive, personality, and social.
There are 7 areas of sociology that interest me: deviance, education, knowledge, religion, secularization, military, and sports.
And there is one area in Anthropology that interests me: Social Anthropology.
And an area in Psychology that interests me the most is: Positive Psychology.
I'm most interested in Social Psychology, Secularization as my major focus in Sociology, and Social Anthropology as my only main area of interest in Anthropology. But of course, I have sub-interests that flow from those 3 areas.
I want to study religious communities and how they compare and contrast with secular communities. There is great importance, I believe, in understanding to what degrees narrative, symbolism, ritual, and spirituality(non-supernatural) play in religious and secular communities. I also wonder if this difference in the degree to which narrative, symbolism, ritual, and spirituality are exercised in these two communities explains why religious communities are the more dynamic and desired type of community in society..
I want to understand:
-Why do some people really depend on their faith for inspiration, strength, and guidance and why other people don't have any need for faith?
-Psychologically, what role does faith play in a person's mental life? Is it a far more natural mental state than critical thinking? Does religious faith first get practiced and developed via the kind of faith and dependance a child has with their parents?
-Is spirituality(the non-supernatural kind) our most primitive form of conscious thinking? Does being one with nature and the environment that we are in our earliest state of mind; the kind of thinking we had when we were still pack animals? If so, does this explain why we seem to be happiest and most content when we are in this spiritual state of mind?
-Sociologically, do friends of the same kind of faith connect more deeply than friends with no need for faith? Why is faith in a cause or ideology an extremely effective way of galvanizing a large group of people into one unified, driving force?
-Biologically, is faith its own type of pleasure circuit? Can we become addicted it or obsessed with it like certain drugs? Does it reduce anxiety and lead to peace of mind better than most if not all self help techniques?
Hopefully important questions, deep insights, and original avenues of thought will come out of this blog inquiry, but for now, this summary captures a good amount of what I'm interested in studying...
