Laughing at myself/Mindfulness
I've connected these two themes into one as I feel they closely relate, saving any repetition. It comes from an early life experience which included my own anger, a loss of a job and frustrations with other's work ethic. Long story short, it meant I was out of a dead-end job and in a position to start again. Leading me to even write these words now. So these 'themes' I am definitely passionate about.
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The way in which they link is through mindfulness, which is a whole bizarre journey in itself, allows me to take very little to heart and enjoy life to its fullest. Laughing at yourself I find allows you to overcome so many negative and disadvantageous instances, turning them into a positive.
The initial concept of mindfulness; being at peace and positive doesn't strike me as something that I could continue with for a good idea, however, the message of it and living in the moment/present I feel is something I would definitely like to continue forward with as a message or essential experience.
My journey of mindfulness began with the book: Buddism Plain and Simple (Hagen.S, 1999). Despite the title, the book makes an enthesis on the teachings of the Buddha rather than Buddism as a religion. This gets me thinking that I could continue researching into the original messages the main/current religions wanted to present. As the modern-day religion we know today, I feel that religion has become a toxic cult-like culture which has lead to cause more suffering than possible good, which can be linked and further explored within my interests in ancient civilisations. I also believe the Effects of Group Pressure Upon the Modification and Distortion of Judgements (Soloman E. Asch, 1952) touches on how the human's natural tendency to form groups and these groups act hostile towards opposing groups is an interesting direction to take my research. Although, I feel it is a very philosophical and personally deep topic, which doesn't scream 'Good Start'.
Objectivism - Selfishness and viewing selfless acts as a selfish one.