Everyone sees the irony that this was written to sell a book?
The mindfulness conspiracy
51–60 of 101 posts
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#52This is not only ridiculous, it may actually be dangerous journalism because it hints at the fact that this may be a conspiracy by the people 'ruling the world'. And it does that with no real evidence. Anything has pros and cons, even if they are not obvious at a first glance. Doesn't mean there is an obscure element to it.
It doesn't. That's your interpretation reading between the clear lines of text. It is being promoted by high stakes journalism and corporations though. No conspiracy needed, as it brings desired results. The motive is clear and not ulterior. Companies want to keep you happy so that you can be exploited more, and if that falls they want you to internalise blame for your own mental state. If you internalise mindfulness…
"Companies want to keep you happy so that you can be exploited more, and if that falls they want you to internalise blame for your own mental state. If you internalise mindfulness, you might be amenable to internalising other values beneficial to the company."
This is as conspiratorial as the article.
"the practice can make odious status quo palatable, removing a source of discontent and thus activism."
Not only are both of these things likely not true, I don't see how they are even related.
Mindfulness, I don't think is really going to change many people's lives, and in the grand scheme it's basically irrelevant. It's a soft nice-feeling meme flowing through the world right now that I think is worth at least considering.
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#53> Other sources of cultural malaise are not discussed. The only mention of the word “capitalist” in Kabat-Zinn’s book Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness occurs in an anecdote about a stressed investor who says: “We all suffer a kind of ADD.” So the author is upset that Kabat-Zinn omitted to name "capitalism" specifically and railing against its evils in a self-help book? One mig…
CBT and MCBT (which uses mindfulness), has control and "being able to progress" as the goal, not just changing emotional state consciously, which the pure mindfulness as taught can devolve into. (A crutch instead of a fix.) Acceptance of the present should not mean letting it stay the same forever. It's more "what's done is done". MCBT still has you focus on repeated occasions when you do this, and changing them h th…
> Acceptance of the present should not mean letting it stay the same forever. It's more "what's done is done".
I'm not sure how mindfulness could possibly be construed to intend letting things stay the same forever. Impermanence is one of the pillars of Buddhist thought and mindfulness directly addresses it.
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#54The bias clearly show through in the writing. "Societal problems", "unjust society", " systemic change that might remove it". Mindfulness is somewhat oversold these days, but his understanding of it seems very simplistic "Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training." Surprise surprise, he has a book to sell about it. https://guardianbookshop.com/mcmindfulness-9781912248315.htm...
Thank you for pointing out the bias and the advertising aspect of this article. I just cancelled my Guardian subscription.
Out of curiosity who else do you subscribe to?
Routers and Guardian are my only go to sources where I don't have to outright be suspicious of anything they write (with some caveats for guardian).
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the "lifeandstyle" section, as per the URL.
"Life and style" can still be factual reporting (i.e. interviews, presenting multiple opinions, etc). This is very clearly an opinion piece and should be labelled as such, the author is injecting themselves into their writing.
There is an "adapted from his book (McMindfulness)" attribution at the bottom.
I think the problem is that the author thinks his opinions are facts,though.
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#56As soon as I read "meditation may be the enemy of activism" the image of the Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức burning himself to death in 1963 popped up in my mind. From Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th%C3%ADch_Qu%E1%BA%A3ng_%C4%9... ) "Đức calmly sat down in the traditional Buddhist meditative lotus position on the cushion. A colleague emptied the contents of the petrol container over Đức's head. Đức rota…
Buddhism is not just meditation. It is a big ethical system. By stripping ethics from it you would stop all its activism.
Indeed. But a premise of Buddhism is that the ethics came about as the result of meditation.
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#57I don't know whether to be frightened of the cult-of-activism or just confused about this disorganized rant.
I see fascism hidden in words like this. The whole motivation seems to be that you must feel rage about anyone and anything which disagrees with your social ideals and any other reaction is unacceptable.
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is also the goal of religion. Tell your worries to god in silence and peace, then wait and be patient for God to fix it.
That is so simplified that it is more wrong than right. I don't know of any mainstream religion that encourages waiting for god to fix things.
> I don't know of any mainstream religion that encourages waiting for god to fix things.
Individuals certainly use God as an excuse sometimes. I've seen some of my relatives say they didn't believe in anthropogenic global warming because God wouldn't allow people to change his world (or something to that effect). Sorry, I don't remember seeing that particular verse in the Bible; and in any case, God lets people do lots of pretty crazy things. Giving us the dignity to choose means giving us the possibility that we actually will royally mess things up.
But I don't think that has anything to do with religion per se. You get atheistic libertarians saying that global warming can't be happening because it isn't priced into the market; or that if it does happen, market forces will intervene to fix things.
People are just really good at finding reasons they shouldn't have to be inconvenienced.
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#59There we go. The authors biased and naive opinion of mindfulness is just that. His opinion. Without any awareness of itself. What happens when we have nothing to think about but thoughts? We lose ourselves in the content of thought without seeing them for what they really are. Human says "my thoughts", yet believes himself to be the content of the thoughts, the seemingly very important thoughts that start with "I" an…
> There we go. The authors biased and naive opinion of > mindfulness is just that. His opinion. Except, it's not labeled as opinion. At this point I just consider the entirely of The Guardian an an opinion piece.
Long Reads are almost always guest authors with a book extract or essay, and it notes at the bottom the associated book.
Re: The mindfulness conspiracy
#60The bias clearly show through in the writing. "Societal problems", "unjust society", " systemic change that might remove it". Mindfulness is somewhat oversold these days, but his understanding of it seems very simplistic "Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training." Surprise surprise, he has a book to sell about it. https://guardianbookshop.com/mcmindfulness-9781912248315.htm...
I also feel he assumes that there has been a better society somewhere in the past.
Well, in some aspects there has been, in others not.
I'm pretty sure a Syrian or a Venezuelan, for example, who was living in way better conditions a decade ago, can very easily agree that this is so.
The relative stability and prosperity aside (which itself is arguable, with a declining middle class and stagnant wages, but anyway), I'm not so sure why it's so hard for e.g. many Americans to see this, as if today is the culmination of anything good in history.
Yes, today they have black civil or gay rights that they didn't in the 30s. They also have more mass shootings than any other time, more inequality, a opioid epidemic, tons of police shootings of blacks, more incarcerated people than any other time, not the best president (and neither the best democratic opponents), and lots of other issues besides. And while TV might be better today, it's not the most memorable decades for movies or novels.
Technology is cumulative (short of a catastrophic event, like the fall of Rome). Culture and society and politics are almost a random walk. They can go either way. Even the most sophisticated societal advancements can go away in a heartbeat, as they found in '30s Germany...