emotionof the tremendous growth of multi-national corporations and their
monopolistic tendencies. This intervention follows the advice of John
Maynard Keynes, an English economist, for just such actions in capitalist
economies. Consumerism, a hedonist aspect of economy, with value
placed on the accumulation of goods, becomes significant along with the
rapid economic growth of countries such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea,
Singapore, China, and India. Now citizens of the world are part of a
global economy, forcing diverse religious traditions to confront economic
realities such as consumerism and materialism.
As the sociologist Talbott Parsons asserts, economic activity is essen-
tial to human life but economics does not fully determine events or lives,
and it is not completely determined itself. There is a tension between
religious beliefs and economic activity, a universal impulse. It is not
unusual to find economic and religious matters becoming conflated with,
for instance, myth and ritual and then being directed toward economic
functions within the control of religious personnel.
Further reading: Dean and Waterman (1999); Graber (2001); Parsons (1967);
Weber (1930)
EMOTION
Characterized as a personal feeling that gives rise to pleasure or pain, emo-
tion can also give rise to desire or fear. Even though they presuppose con-
cepts of social relationships and institutions, emotions tend to be temporary,
fleeting, and repetitive during the normal course of life, although it is pos-
sible to become consumed by a particular emotion, such as greed, and allow
it to dominate one’s life. Some emotions like hate are generally considered
negative because they potentially lead to interpersonal and social tension,
whereas other emotions such as love, benevolence, friendliness, admiration,
or gratitude are able to accomplish interpersonal and social bonding.
As a general rule, devotional types of religion tend to encourage posi-
tive emotions, while ascetic types of religious movements call for the
control or eradication of emotions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and
Sikhism, and devotional Hindu and Buddhist movements condone or
even encourage emotions, especially love, within their confines.
Monastic, ascetic, or mystic types of religiosity tend to control the
emotions because they generally obstruct progress towards more ecstatic
types of experience, although there are many exceptions when it comes
to an emotion such as love.