Brian Hewlett, social scientist and edutainer

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Spirituality, Religion, and Mysticism

Politics and Economics

Featured Interview

Interview 8: Erv

The Ethnography of Spirituality Project (ESP) continues with our most recent participant. The ESP is the first of several on-going ethnographies that this site will be home to in the coming years.

I met Erv, an established Resort Restaurant Manager by trade, through my friend Dylan a couple years ago and we have remained acquainted since then. In this interview, Erv offers some very interesting insight into the properties of utility and activation of spirituality. He mainly argues that “spirituality is about how you live your life and about what you do” rather than the journey to determine who you are as many others see it. He contends that spirituality is living the life and it doesn’t matter what it is that you do or how you embody life as a person. To him, spirituality is a “tool for solice” while simultaneously being a “con act for your beliefs,” which in other words is an activity that serves as a platform for your ideology.

If you want to hear more from Erv, view his full interview, leave comments, and chat with him online.

View previews of other interviews above, access the full versions of these interviews as well, and make comments all from within our video blogging area.

Participate in our spirituality survey, see the latest up-to-the-minute results, and request an interview in our research area.

Who knows? Maybe you will be our next featured interview.

Featured Post

Collaboration as an Economic Alternative

One of the major challenges President Obama’s Adminstration is trying to salvage a faltering U.S. economy. A major issue associated with that challenge is trying to overcome it while not trashing the country’s relationship with the capitalist model. Capitalism has been the cornerstone of the U.S. economy for at least since the time before World War I and many Americans go berzerk if any other type of economic model is suggested. Despite this uneasiness U.S. citizens have with change, the current situation warrants some type of alteration and the President himself has actually put out the call for the American people to come up with alternatives.

Much of the negative reaction that people have to alternatives to capitalism is based on the perception that any other model, will not allow individuals to dictate their own success in a free-market system. Unfortunately, this is a false perception that must be put to rest if another model is going to have a chance.

The key to individual success that people are concerned with is not based solely on individual production even in the capitalist system but in the opportunity provided by the market structure in which that individual is producing. In other words, I could produce all day long in a capitalist economy but if the economy does not give me the opportunity to trade what I produce, then I will not be successful.

The key to individual success is also not based on the fact that the system offers a free market in which individuals offer their products. A system where I am free to trade and others have freedom to trade with me means nothing if there is no benefit or incentive to trade and no value in what is being traded.

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See more of President Obama's Weekly Addresses at ChangeDotGov.

Sexuality

Money

Featured Post

Bhakti Yoga helps with Sexual and Non-sexual Relationships

During my silent fast the last few days, I did a quick read of a pamphlet book written by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, Founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The pamphlet reconfirmed my understanding of the relationship between me and the divine, known in the Sanskrit language as bhakti.

Bhakti Yoga is seen as the process of awakening that supreme or highest form of love. With the capacity to love being inherent to our human form, most, if not all, human beings are seeking the highest form of love they can achieve, which means they are, knowingly or unknowingly, engaged this form of yoga. Unfortunately, I have to agree with Swami Prabhupāda that many of us fall short of the goal of higher love due to the many pitfalls of seeing love as a physical or mental process.

According to the ancient Sanskrit teachings upon which Prabhupāda’s writings are based, the supreme highest form of love is devotion, which involves the lover, the beloved, and the loving relationship, all of which are eternal. In this understanding each individual soul is the lover, the beloved is the divine personality of the universe or GOD for some, and bhakti is the spiritual loving relationship between the two.

In reading this refresher, my thoughts brought me to the understanding that regardless of one’s belief in the eternal state of the individual soul that inhabits the being, one can surely utilize this understanding in executing their relationships and sexuality, by which I mean expressing their love physically with another.

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Featured Post

The Insanity of Bank Overdraft Fees

Happy New Year? It would be a lot happier if I had the almost $750 that my bank charged me in the last seven months.

How much did your bank hit you for last year?

One of the insane things I have had to deal with, as did many others this past year, is the fact that banks have been altering their fee schedules in an effort to make more money from the consumer via fees as the feel the economic crunch of their investments waning.

One would think that with the billions of dollars in government bailouts being doled out to the institutions that tell us they are taking “care of” our money, that they would be assessing less fees, as a means of incentives to keep associations with consumers intact.

Instead, they are boosting maintenance fees, fees for credit card balance transfers, fees for money market account transactions, fees for low balances, overdrafts, and lots of other situations that are unfortunately indicative of a faltering economy.
In July of 2009, Marshall Eckblad reports that “Overdraft fees, which are charged to customers who run negative balance, drove more than $30 billion in revenue to banks last year alone.” The Wall Street Journal also recently reported another increase in bank fees associated with Check Cards.

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