Why do people believe what they do about themselves and others? Where does self-image and perception of others come from? Why are we so skewed in our perception of ourselves and others? Why does everyone see things in different ways? Are we all right/are we all correct? *Where does low self esteem come from? Why do we often view ourselves negatively? Why are we so often confused about ourselves and our destinies—what we should do with our lives? Why is our perception of ourselves so messed up.
*I’m signed up for my first (ever) philosophy class this coming Fall semester. Philosophy; the study of serious, open-ended questions, I guess. If ever there was a discipline that studied the individual and how he relates to the world, it would be philosophy, most likely. I think sociology studies society as a whole and people within the subgroups that they belong to—i.e., background, religion, subculture, age, sexuality, experiences in life, how people relate to each other, and etc. Psychology is the scientific study of human behavior, I’ve heard. Anthropology is the study of humanity in its historical, biological, and social context; a comprehensive view of humankind from an impartial lens. And so on. But the main discipline that concerns itself with things like the different occurrences in the world and how we relate to them is philosophy, I guess. How we make sense of things, and etc. There are various topics and content areas within this field, areas of discussion and inquiry.
For some reason, I feel that the most famous philosophers, the ones that people gravitate towards and think of first, are the nihilists and atheists. But there are a lot of religious and theist philosophers; Christian ones, Jewish ones, Muslim, Hindu, etc., as well as spiritual ones, mystical ones.
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If I get to choose a topic and write an informed essay about it during this upcoming class of mine, I’ll probably choose the above topic; how humans view themselves and each other, and how they come to their conclusions about themselves and each other. I’ll probably need to draw from psychological, sociological, and cultural sources to help inform my thesis, my main hypothesis and foundational statement, or proposition; tentative concept.
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