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How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

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Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#31

If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly determine and optimize the ways in which to do so. That's the beauty of capitalism--or possibly even economics in general--it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope. No matter how ancient, sophisticated, sacred, or meaningful a practice may have been--no matter what reverence our ancestral betters may have applied…

>For the true capitalist

What percentage of the US population do you believe falls into this category?

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#32
Interesting take. I could paraphrase this as a response to this sort of strawman, "It sucks that we have to pay [for xyz necessity], wait [in traffic for abc experience], and accept [toxic influencers on your life], but thats just part of the human experience".

I think its an acceptable strawman, as often we do need to remind ourselves that, "No one but me is actually forcing me to [live here / work here / see these people ]".

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#33

If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly determine and optimize the ways in which to do so. That's the beauty of capitalism--or possibly even economics in general--it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope. No matter how ancient, sophisticated, sacred, or meaningful a practice may have been--no matter what reverence our ancestral betters may have applied…

> it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope

I would like to point out that this is a truism.

To a hammer, everything is a nail.

To an earthworm, everything is dirt.

To gray goo, everything is prime material for making more gray goo.

To capitalism, everything is whatever capitalism needs to consume in order to make more and more of whatever it is it wants to produce.

Systems of not-infinite scope are, well, limited.

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#34

I would say that most institutions that exist for moral edification -- religions, Boy Scouts, civic clubs -- do essentially the same thing which is align the attitudes of the weaker to the benefit of the stronger.

Much the same way that popular media has sold socially-acceptable prepackaged rebellion for the mollification of disgruntled adolescents (and adolescents-at-heart) for decades...

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#35

If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly determine and optimize the ways in which to do so. That's the beauty of capitalism--or possibly even economics in general--it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope. No matter how ancient, sophisticated, sacred, or meaningful a practice may have been--no matter what reverence our ancestral betters may have applied…

So corporations find that mentally healthy employees are more productive/valuable so they promote mental fortitude. Somehow anti-capitalists spin even that into some deep evil. Ridiculous.

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#37
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not

Of course: https://innermammalinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/... http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunc... I thought everybody knew this.

Most people think depression is caused by, "an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain", and don't know much else about it.

Thanks for the papers, they're interesting and I hadn't seen all of that research, despite being somewhat familiar with the field.

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#38

If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly determine and optimize the ways in which to do so. That's the beauty of capitalism--or possibly even economics in general--it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope. No matter how ancient, sophisticated, sacred, or meaningful a practice may have been--no matter what reverence our ancestral betters may have applied…

>For the true capitalist What percentage of the US population do you believe falls into this category?

None.

I mean it less a concrete instantiation and more as an abstract type that rises as a side effect of the system.

Jeff Bezos, to unfairly use him as an example, I doubt has any desire to efface the significance of historical human practice. I doubt he has a vendetta against the subtle social dynamics and sphere of relationships that are established between localized mom and pop shops and customers and that often begin to humanize, at least to a minimum extent, the otherwise emotionless and inhuman process of transaction--bartering, recollection of past trades and successes, allowing a purchase on one's word, trust--all of these cultural (an instance where we can still find something identifiable as human in capitalist practice) dynamics are snuffed by Amazon's enterprise. Amazon's mission is not to kill off this whole space of human practice--its simply dedicated to the capitalist game, and once Jeff is playing there's really no way for him to stop--abiding as he is to the logic of capitalism--the rules of the game. It is a logic that reduces all to one vector--profit. So long as increased profit is the result of an action it is encouraged by capitalism--capitalism itself provides no moral system--it selects a single quantity and hopes to maximize it abstracted from all the details and context--worse, it is assumed justified as natural human behavior (this is the sinister underside of Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand"--there's no need to worry about economy because it will "regulate itself" because it is predicated on trade a "natural phenomena" and set of behaviors--all of a sudden the argument for capitalism turns to putting it forward as a naturalism and not the construct and theory that it is--nothing in nature says that man has to maximize his profits, aka his excess--nature only needs you to break even--it only demands you survive. Capitalists would rather have you believe the will to excess is natural because now the system suddenly has some outside justification).

Luckily living breathing human beings aren't influenced only by capitalism--other stuff has stuck around, which curbs anyone from becoming the 'true capitalist' which is just a manifestation of a capitalist system operating at full efficiency and only under its own logic--i.e. other value judgments don't mix in, as they do with actual human beings--giving pause to what would be the logical solution for increased profits in the capitalist game (i.e. not giving a damn about the shuttering local store and all the people and relationships this closure displaces, not giving a damn about environmental side effects, etc. etc.).

Capitalism lends itself to a sort of Machiavellianism in the name of profit--the reason this is something that's dangerous and that we ought to pay attention to is because, like all dangerous phenomena, it is subtle. People buy into systemic structures without fighting against them because the scale is nigh insurmountable, especially once the phenomena reaches a global level, and sometimes people don't even realize they are participants. Jeff Bezos for instance, is not going to stop the Amazon gravy train just because a few thousands if not millions of other people have been negatively impacted by Amazon. Not only the economic sense, but the social and cultural effects too--death of the small shop owner, death of local shop apprenticeships, death of plurality(suggestions from different employees at your local store are changed into the one monolithic suggestion feed of amazon--polyphonic and eclectic curation and division of tastes decays, individuals transform into collectives, fans into fanbases, group think develops)--in general the gradual reduction of types of relationships to those only manageable and congenial to the notion of exchange, and furthermore, exchange that can be mediated or enhanced through the use of technology.

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#39

'The current translations of ancient mindful practices are also highly gendered. In a culture where women are much more likely to be encouraged to apply acceptance, silence, stillness and the relinquishing of resistance to their problems, the trap of mindfulness can be set to stun for those who may be much more in need of speaking up, resisting and taking space in the workplace.' This seems completely back to front t…

I'd like to hear more about it, but maybe there is too much content behind it for the editorial. Are women more likely to accept a bad work environment? Are women more likely to be encouraged to keep quiet? Is being encouraged to keep quiet more likely to be effective on women than men?

Re: How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015)

#40
post #35

If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly determine and optimize the ways in which to do so. That's the beauty of capitalism--or possibly even economics in general--it acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope. No matter how ancient, sophisticated, sacred, or meaningful a practice may have been--no matter what reverence our ancestral betters may have applied…

So corporations find that mentally healthy employees are more productive/valuable so they promote mental fortitude. Somehow anti-capitalists spin even that into some deep evil. Ridiculous.

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