What do you study?

[L. Jay Echoes]

Formally, I have a BA in English with a minor in psychology.


Informally, the four main branches of my intellectual pursuits are Literature, Psychology, Biology, and


Anthropoloy. Those are the four main lenses through which I observe the world.


Specifically, I look at everything that doesn't happen to me as a plot device. E.g, Everything is going normal,


something disrupts the routine, the people involved strive to return their circumstance to homeostasis, then


something disrupts that, everyone tries to restore their surroundings in a way that will enable them to return


to homeostasis, then THAT is disrupted, etc... Within these disruptions, any individual might uncover a solution


that will bring some restoration; after all, this process happens in both microcosm and macrocosm. Ultimately,


though, nothing is static. Some vessel of opposition will always turn up.


My psychological lens involves the symbolism within the world, and the discrepencies between the individual


impacts they have on multiple people; the symbols themselves are, I daresay, fixed. The ideas they represent are


not. Within the separate minds of the people who encounter them, there is at least a slight difference, albeit


one whose measurement depends entirely on the honesty of the person reporting it. Invisibilia's Season 3 episode


gives the example of black bears in a rural Minnesota town: Are they a brutal, lethal menace, liable to maul you


should you get too close, or are they a widely misunderstood sweetheart who's supposed inclination to attack can


be easily circumvented with the proper respect?


Less pronounced but still present is my Biological view of things. We're all trapped within the bones, blood and


organs we are born with, and most of what we experience is shaped by their function. Ever wondered how strawberries see the world? If individual trees have personalities? What a holocaust among bacteria would look like? If fungus could afford to be picky, what would inspire it? Whether or not Daffodils have free will? Actually, I've never wondered any of these things, but I like the way they sound now that I've typed them out. Gonna post about O. Henry's "Tale of a Tainted Tenner" in the "Odd Book" thread after this.


Then there's my interest in Anthropology, which is pretty much a culmination of the aforementioned lenses applied to mankind, specifically. I like looking up some specific region's cultural backstory, what environmental factors sculpted the social factors, and what social factors sculpted the scope of individual personality.


I got carried away in describing this. I'm not really studying at the moment, I'll do that when Autumn rolls around. But yeah, that's what I go and read up on.