Saturday, September 12, 2009

[Thoughts on] EnlightenNext magazine

One of my favorite magazines of recent years, or at least one of the only ones that I really try to read cover to cover is EnlightenNext (formerly What is Enlightenment). Recently it appears that they have had financial problems, like much of the printed press, and are now calling for donations, financial support and the like. I am kind of worried about them as most people in a delicate financial situation only make those kinds of requests/announcements late in the game and when they have to.

Already, in the last few years I noticed the increasing use of advertising in their pages and started to wonder about that. Although, to their credit, these have usually been (more or less) spiritually-oriented ads. Which brings me to the real subject (sub-text) of this post: how can you reconcile spirituality with commerciality? (I know that that's not really a word, or at least a regularly-used word, but I am sure you know what I mean). How can you be discussing enlightenment on page 1 and asking for money on page 2? Then again, maybe it is a modern form of (the somewhat medieval) alms - people on a spiritual mission depending on the generosity of strangers for their survival.

And here I go off on another tangent. Alms and living off other people's generosity reminds me of St. Francis of Assisi, one of my favorite religious historical figures. God's little pauper, as Kazantzakis called him, was one of the first well-known (or at least well-documented) renunciates. While he had absolute faith, his acolytes probably had a more difficult time dealing with the day-to-day. As I see a personal letter from the founder of the magazine calling for financial help I must admit I hear more concern and realism than the irrealism born of absolute faith. Which probably means that the rest of the staff is a lot more worried... I do hope that they figure out a solution.

What I read (past tense) between the lines is what got me thinking and what eventually led to this post. It is not easy to reconcile "doing the right thing" (or a good thing) and getting paid for it. We are now in a world in which we expect a lot of things to be free, open source, 24/7, available, shareable, etc. So how can spirituality not be all of that too?

While I don't know if they are considering this, I have a feeling that many of their readers would be willing to pay more for their subscription to see the magazine survive. How much is too much to pay for a unique magazine? Not sure I know the answer to that one, but I do imagine that the price sensitivity of their readership will be less elastic for this magazine than for others.

Finally, getting back to the ads I mentioned earlier. One of the phenomena I have seen on the internet in financial advising, commercial websites, blogs (but not mine, otherwise there would be more than a dozen of you reading this) and now spirituality is something I call "closed-circle expertization". A handful of experts mention a handful of experts, write the testimonials for their books, blogs, courses, conferences, show up as guests in the books, blogs, courses and conferences of each other, are present on the same panels, roundtables and speaking circuits. A kind of cartel in which each boosts the interests of the others in order to boost their own interests. It is a great business model and one that probably evolves more naturally (organically to use the parlance) than most business cartels, but it not less present nonetheless. Such it is with most of the spiritual leaders we read and hear about today - and EnglightenNext's panel of spiritual leaders is not much different.

Nevertheless the quality of the writing, the breadth and depth of articles and spiritual leaders, as well as the themes they explore does make it a magazine well worth reading and thinking about and, now, supporting.

Enjoy! and tell them I sent you ; )