Gift Economy: Living Without Money

A gift economy is a model of exchange where valuables or some commodity is given away without an agreement for an immediate or future reward. Every transaction involves either giving or receiving gifts and presents. In a gift economy, there is no money and there is no private property. At first sight, a gift economy seems…

View Post

British Humanist Association Says Schools Still Have Homophobic Policies

Section 28 of the Local Government Act (1988), passed by the Tory government, stated that a local authority “shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality” or “promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.” A number of LGBT student support groups closed…

View Post

Scientific Explanations of the Near-Death Experience

There has been a lot of mystery surrounding what is known as near-death experiences or NDEs. The term was coined in psychiatrist Raymond Moody’s popular book Life After Life (1975), in which he detailed people’s testimonials of their NDEs. Moody interviewed 150 people who experienced an NDE as a result of being clinically dead or nearly…

View Post

The Racism Behind the War on Drugs

Director Quentin Tarantino brought up an unexpected subject in an interview recently. He brought up the subject of the war on drugs. But what was interesting was the comparison he made between the war and drugs and slavery as it existed in the 1800s. In his own words: This whole thing of…this ‘War on Drugs,’ and…

View Post

Why Did Humour and Laughter Evolve?

People will have different opinions about what is funny and what isn’t; what makes them laugh and what doesn’t. But we do know that humour and laughter exist, so the mysterious question surrounding this fact is: how did they evolve? Is there really some evolutionary advantage to finding ‘humour’ (however you define it) in social…

View Post