How to narrow down one's interests?

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Ishkah
Posts: 97
Joined: September 21st, 2020, 9:20 am
Favorite Philosopher: Saul Newman
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How to narrow down one's interests?

Post by Ishkah »

I’ve not been to university and have just done part-time/seasonal work and lived sparsely till now in order to enjoy time to read, travel and help out on campaigns. But I would like to look toward a well paying job to have more options in the future. The only problem is I’ve no idea how to narrow down what I want to do, so don’t even know what to study or get work experience in. Anyway's here's a big list of stuff I'm thinking about, but obviously don't feel the need to read it, as I would just enjoy reading people wax lyrical about any thoughts the topic brings up for you also.

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Table of Contents
  • My Writing
  • My Editing
  • My Cataloguing
  • My Other Projects
  • Specific study Interests
  • University degrees and modules interests
  • Work Interests
  • Reading Interests
-

My Writing

Personal Essays Theatre Scripts Social Movement Theory Philosophy Guides -

My Editing

Biographical -

My Cataloguing

Library building & social movement research
  • The Radical Zine Library
  • Vegan / Far-Left Community Directories
  • Vegan Video Resource Library
  • Vegan / Far-Left Podcast Libraries
  • Community Discord Directory
Library building & other research -

My Other Projects

Writing/editing social movement theory & philosophy
  • Philosophical Vegan Wiki
  • Activist Journeys Compilation Zine Series
Other
  • Men’s survivor compilation zine series - Psychology/Sociology of abuse
  • Freegle - Map building & rule drafting
  • Vegan/Left Tube Analytics & Labelling - Research & website building
-

Specific study Interests
  • Social Psychology
  • Human Geography
  • English Literature
  • Applied Ethics
  • Political Theory
-

University degrees and modules interests
  • Philosophy
  • Thinking Skills
  • Critical Thinking
-
  • Psychology
-
  • Human Geography
-
  • Sociology
  • Anthropology
  • Communication and Culture
  • Citizenship Studies
  • Leisure Studies
  • Criminology
  • International Relations
  • Travel and Tourism
  • World Development
  • Environmental Studies
  • Environmental Technology
  • General Studies
  • Global Development
  • Health and Social Care
-
  • English Language
  • English Language and Literature
  • English Literature
-
  • History
-
  • Film Studies
  • Journalism
  • Media Studies
  • Moving Image Arts
  • Performing Arts
  • Digital Media
  • Digital Technology
  • Drama and Theatre
-

Work Interests
  • Publishing Papers, Writing Articles & Books, Making Video Essays, Documentaries & Indy Films
  • Campaign Organising
  • Counselling
  • Journalism
  • Library or Museum Work
  • Green Architecture
-

Reading Interests

Philosophy


Compilations
  • How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy
Consequentialist
  • Nonzero: History, Evolution & Human Cooperation: The Logic of Human Destiny
  • Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Morality Meets Rationality
Virtue Ethics
  • Anarchism and Moral Philosophy
  • Freedom and Democracy in an Imperial Context: Dialogues with James Tully
  • Ethics and Self-Cultivation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Routledge Studies in Ethics and Moral Theory)
  • Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics and
  • The Fragility of Goodness Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy
  • How To Be A Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Living
  • Tolerance And The Ethical Life
  • Exemplarist Moral Theory
Deontologist
  • Normativity
  • Self-Constitution: Agency, Identity, and Integrity
  • Animal Rights, Human Wrongs: An Introduction to Moral Philosophy
  • Ethics
Subjectivist/Intuitionist
  • The Realistic Spirit: Wittgenstein, Philosophy, and the Mind
  • Of The Standard of Taste
  • Lectures on the Philosophy of History
  • A Wittgensteinian Way with Paradoxes
Nihilist Ethics
  • The Politics of Postanarchism
  • From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power
  • The Radicalism of Romantic Love
  • Anti-Oedipus
  • Fanged Noumena: Collected Writings 1987-2007
  • The Second Sex
  • The Ethics of Ambiguity
  • The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979
  • Tiqqun 1: Conscious Organ of The Imaginary Party
  • Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man
  • Modernity and the Holocaust
  • Wasted Lives: Modernity and Its Outcasts
  • Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty
  • An Introduction to Buddhism Teachings, History and Practices
  • The Selfless Mind Personality: Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism
  • Moonshadows, Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy
  • The Complete Essays
  • The Trial
  • The Rebel
  • Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence
  • Nature
  • It’s Just a Feeling: The Philosophy of Desirism
Psychology
  • Do Apes Read Minds? Toward a New Folk Psychology by Kristin Andrews
  • Feral Children and Clever Animals Reflections on Human Nature
Political Theory
  • Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach
  • Post-Anarchism A Reader
  • Fighting For Ourselves
  • After Post-Anarchism
  • Anarchy after Leftism
  • Anarchism and the Advent of Paris Dada
  • Granny Made me an Anarchist
  • Sing A Battle Song
  • Clandestines; The pirate Journals of an Irish Exile
  • Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity
  • Days of War Nights of Love
Labor Organizing
  • Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics
  • Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society
  • Immigrants against the State: Yiddish and Italian Anarchism in America
Social Organizing
  • Understanding Social Movements
Feminist
  • Feminist Identity Development and Activism in Revolutionary Movements
  • The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women
  • Fire with Fire: New Female Power and How It Will Change the Twenty-First Century
  • Reclaiming the F Word: Feminism Today
  • There is No Word For It
  • Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What It is and Why It Matters
  • Heterosexuality
  • Women's Studies; A Reader
Anti-Racist
  • Black Girl Dangerous On Race, Queerness, Class and Gender
  • Not Born a Refugee Woman: Contesting Identities, Rethinking Practices
  • Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition
  • The Racial Contract
  • Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance
  • Anti-Imperialism
  • Drone Wars: Transforming Conflict, Law, And Policy
  • Consuming Cultures
  • Oil and Water; Being Han in Xinjiang
Animal Liberation
  • Feral: Rewilding the Land, Sea and Human Life
  • The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy and Why They Matter
  • Beasts of Burden: Biopolitics, Labor, and Animal Life in British Romanticism
  • Europe: A Natural History
  • Decolonizing Nature
  • Hungry for Peace: How You Can Help End Poverty and War with Food Not Bombs
  • Complete Urban Farmer: Growing Your Own Fruit and Vegetables in Town
  • The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living
  • Creating a Flower Meadow
  • Earth Repair: A Grassroots Guide to Healing Toxic and Damaged Landscapes
  • Anarchism and Animal Liberation; Essays on Complementary Elements of Total Liberation
  • Making a Killing: The Political Economy of Animal Rights
  • The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory
  • Aphro-Ism: Essays on Pop Culture, Feminism, and Black Veganism from Two Sisters
  • Sistah Vegan: Black Female Vegans Speak on Food, Identity, Health, and Society
  • Oxen At The Intersection: A Collision
  • A Rational Approach to Animal Rights: Extensions in Abolitionist Theory
  • Philosophy and Animal Life
  • Fellow Creatures: Our Obligations to the Other Animals
  • Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights
  • Animal Property Rights: A Theory of Habitat Rights for Wild Animals
  • Rattling The Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals
  • Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions
  • Piecemeal Protest: Animal Rights in the Age of Nonprofits
History
  • A People’s History of the Second World War: Resistance Versus Empire
  • The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes
  • Dracula’s Crypt: Bram Stoker, Irishness, and the Question of Blood
  • Nothing But the Same Old Story: Roots of Anti-Irish Racismby Liz Curtis
  • The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders
  • Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Ordinary Germans, 1945
  • The Wretched of the Earth
  • The Diary of a Young Girl: Definitive Edition
  • A People's History of England by Arthur Leslie Morton
  • Liverpool: A People's History
  • The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America
  • The Tragedy of a Generation; The Rise and Fall of Jewish Nationalism in Eastern Europe
Migration Studies
  • Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural (Anthropology, Culture, and Society)
  • Paradoxes of Cultural Recognition (Research in Migration and Ethnic Relations)
  • Europe and The People Without History
  • Coloniality, Ontology, and the Question of the Posthuman
  • God's Heart Has No Borders: How Religious Activists Are Working for Immigrant Rights
  • Land of Strangers
  • This Place Will Become Home: Refugee Repatriation to Ethiopia
  • Asylum, Migration and Community
  • Refugee Boy
  • The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail
  • The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child
  • World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made
  • Border Watch
Wanderlust
  • Into the wild
  • Me, my bike and a street dog called Lucy
  • On the Road
  • Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance
  • Off the Map
  • Bikepacking: Mountain Bike Camping Adventures on the Wild Trails of Britain
  • Hobohemia Emma Goldman, Lucy Parsons, Ben Reitman & Other Agitators & Outsiders in 1920s/30s Chicago
Art
  • Andrei Tarkovsky About His Film Art In His Own Words
Science
  • A Brief History of Time
  • Naked Science
Comedy
  • Love All the People: Letters, Lyrics, Routines
  • BILL HICKS: Agent of Evolution
  • Andy Kaufman Revealed!: Best Friend Tells All
  • How I Escaped My Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian
  • Mack The Life
  • The Big Yin The Life and Times of Billy Connolly
  • The Tao of Bill Murray Real-Life Stories of Joy, Enlightenment, and Party Crashing
Fiction
  • The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
  • The heart is a lonely hunter
  • Calvin: A Novel
  • Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
  • The Stone Gods
  • Machine of Death A collection of stories about people who know how they will die
  • Mortal Engines Quartet
  • Chronicles of Ancient Darkness
  • The Kin
  • Unfinished Tales The Lost Lore of Middle-earth
  • The Setting Sun (1968)
  • I am a Cat
Illustrated
  • Brussels in Short
  • The Velveteen Rabbit
  • Super-Toys Last All Summer Long
  • The Book of Genesis
  • Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
  • Duncan: the Wonder Dog
  • Dykes to watch out for
  • Persepolis
  • Surrogates
  • Waltz with Bashir
  • An Illustrated Book Of Bad Arguments
  • Diary of a Miscreant: A Morgenmuffel Zine Anthology
  • Calvin and Hobbes (Volume 1)
  • East of West
  • Saga
User avatar
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
The admin formerly known as Scott
Posts: 5765
Joined: January 20th, 2007, 6:24 pm
Favorite Philosopher: Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
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Re: How to narrow down one's interests?

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

Hi,

I think you be a great candidate to review books at OnlineBookClub. It would work well with your chosen lifestyle of traveling and reading. If you do sign up, let me know because I can help fast-track you through the onboarding process since you are clearly well-read. In any case, here is the link for more info and to sign up:

https://onlinebookclub.org/free-books-for-reviews.php
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.

"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
Fellowmater
Posts: 77
Joined: November 23rd, 2017, 11:12 pm

Re: How to narrow down one's interests?

Post by Fellowmater »

I've always loved the Ten Commandments for Job Interviews of Richard Bolles. Perhaps I can share this with you. https://www.parachutebook.com/
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Theoryst
New Trial Member
Posts: 5
Joined: January 6th, 2021, 5:59 am

Re: How to narrow down one's interests?

Post by Theoryst »

While it's okay to be interested in a lot of things, you do need to have a specific area of focus to be admitted to a program/work of your interest. So basically, what you do is you just pick whichever one seems the most interesting and what you feel like you can work on for the next 5-6 years, and concentrate on that one. That is essentially what I did - I have a lot of different, varied interests, and I just pick one for stretches of time that make sense.
Fellowmater
Posts: 77
Joined: November 23rd, 2017, 11:12 pm

Re: How to narrow down one's interests?

Post by Fellowmater »

Too many interests means your attention is undivided & therefore you're less focused & scattered. Hone your energy on the important only. Start learning to manage your time if you have already.
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