The article literally starts with this: "It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the ravages of capitalism..."
For a more meaningful discussion of mindfulness, I recommend the "Mind The Mindfulness Hype" episode of The Psychology Podcast [1] . They dig into what the scientific method has to say to mindfulness, what studies have been made and what is missing, and what benefits can be realistically expected. And what's over the top hype.
Sam Harris regularly claims that it reduces the half life of emotions such as rage.
I personally find that a 'deterministic' view of life achieves that for me.
For whatever reason when I meditate I can only leverage it as a relaxation tool, as opposed to witnessing my thoughts occur, which I think is somewhat 'mindfulness'.
I've struggled to get very much out of mindfulness (primarily via Sam Harris) but this 'half-life of an emotion' thing is one of the bits that has worked.
The best example I've experienced was being in an argument with my wife about something or other that had gotten heated to the point I was getting angry. But then I got a phone call from someone at one of my clients - I immediately had to be a different person for that call. Once it had finished I came back to my wife and felt like I entirely had the _choice_ as to whether I would be angry again. I was, in fact, almost certainly treading an automatic path down which I _would have_ made myself angry to continue from where we were. Instead, the obviousness of this was so apparent that I didn't - because it suddenly felt artificial.
What Sam Harris teaches in his meditation app is not 'mindfulness' as commonly understood, i.e. in the vein of Vipassana or even MBSR. It's more like his own lite version of Dzogchen practices.
Thank you for this link, the episode shows very well what is the state of scientific research on mindfulness and meditation, and gets us more curious about the mind itself.
One goal of mindfulness and meditation is to reduce the amount of noise in our heads so that we can see things clearer. This allows us to take more _effective_ actions.
The author seems to have a clear bias that radical == good, and this puts me off. Radical action can be good, and it can be bad. Mindfulness can help us see which case is which.
I picked up a religious leaflet that said (this from memory, approximately) that nuclear war would have to actually start, then god would step in to sort things out. Can't remember the sect, might have been jehova's witnesses.
That's probably "dispensationalism".[1] This is tied up with the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, involves Israel's role in "End Times", and is taken too seriously by parts of the US religious right. Searching for that term will lead you to some weird places.
> 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.
Does it though? Do we have any kind of data about it?
If it helps one activist and million corporate drones and people looking for status quo, the practice is not on the whole a friend of activism. So what are the numbers?
No, more like not turning activists into content status quo followers. But it's problematic to discern the two.
Perhaps a study on how many activists quit when using or not using mindfulness techniques. Though the confounder is huge, people trying this have some sort of a psychological problem most of the time...
Good walk for two-three hours would do better than mindfullness session.
(hint: after about 25-40 minutes of intensive walking you start to burn fat primarily; this process has a side effect of endocannabinoids' release [1]; you get healthier and get high at same time; I am not including here release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor for you to discover it and effects of BDNF serum level increase on the mental state and thinking)
Agreed. The author is a profoundly unaware person. I get the sense that he tried meditation for a while, didn’t succeed (perhaps due to this angry “radical” mindset) and then decided to monetize the failure by writing a book critical of the practice. Well at least it injects some variety into the conversation. It’s not everyday that you find someone actively disparaging mindfulness.
Be mindful of the source of this - the quality of content coming out of The Guardian has slipped since its recent change of editorial - it is much more content with click-bait and sensationalism than with anything more substantial.
From the opening line this seems to be coming across as little more than a virtue signalling piece for anti-Capitalists, and progresses into tired old tropes about Western consumerism.
Mindfulness is somewhat oversold these days, but his understanding of it seems very simplistic "Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training."
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...
"Inequality" doesn't mean that even the poorer part of a society has slid backwards.
Considering the situation of Afroamericans, I think you underappreciate the amount of lynchings, violence (not just by police) and structural discrimination that took place. All of that is at a record low, if still much too high.
There is still a lot of work to be done, but undoubtedly their situation has improved, long term.
>"Inequality" doesn't mean that even the poorer part of a society has slid backwards.
Unfortunately it does, in two ways. One is objective, the other can be argued, but is my opinion nonetheless.
1) Inequality has seen the "poorer part of a society" slid backwards in many objectively measured standards of living, from infant mortality to overall life expectancy, to home ownership, retirement savings, and so on. Those are in absolute (and inflation adjusted when needed) values, worse than in the past.
2) Humans are not mere animals, and their progress, self-respect, etc are not just absolute, but also relative to the overall resources available. We don't compare ourselves to cavemen era people or to 1928 people, but to what's available today. More people having less share of their society's wealth is a slide backwards, even if each has more toys than someone in 1970s or 3000 B.C. had. In other words, "median share of society's wealth per person" is also a metric to keep track of over time.
(And the more important stuff, like homes, health care, education, are increasingly priced out of reach, even relative to 1970 or 1980, so that's a slide backwards whether seen relatively or in absolute terms).
I was not talking about inequality in the specific situation of the past few decades in US history, but about inequality in general. And in general, inequality really doesn't mean that, just from a mathematical standpoint.
I can directly speak for Germany, and the points you mention just don't hold true. Our whole society improved, despite rising inequality, perceived and measured.
For the US you cite particular measures. I'm not sure those are necessarily comprehensive and even if so, it's only a very tiny backslide, and also only for a relatively tiny percentage of the population.
Also I'm looking more at the long term trends, and those are looking up, in general, all over the world. Including infant mortality (the absolute number of children dying declined for at least 50 years straight, despite more children being born up to relatively recently, see peak child phenomenon), life expectancy and absolute poverty.
Individual wealth is not about the share of the total wealth in a society. At least for me it is about suffering, and the reasons for suffering are indeed decreasing. Maybe not for any time period and any country you choose, but overall, yes.
Only financial newspapers, Bloomberg, WSJ and the like. I like The Atlantic, but don't subscribe. I wish I could subscribe to a collection of them, since it gets expensive.
Reuters seems reliable and don't seem to want to perpetuate partisanship in the way that The Guardian has lately. Having an agenda is fine, having that agenda be perpetuating pointless conflict with "the others", and proving how intelligent we in the in-group are is not very useful. This article was just the final straw. I come from Norway which isn't a two-party nation so I think this enters into my dislike for the black and white thinking that seems to be growing in the Anglosphere where I currently live.
Why is it a problem here ? It's clearly indicated at the end and I see books as a natural complement to newspapers. I generally dislike advertisement but this seems to be one of the rare legitimate case.
I honestly don't know exactly why it rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe because he's railing against capitalism (I can't even count the number of assertions in the article, and very little explanation or evidence is offered) and then procedes to try to sell his book based on what I personally think is a shallow understanding of the subject matter.
In general, complaining that the pop culture version of something is shallow and ineffective compared to a full understanding (which ironically, the author lacks), could be generalized without lack of accuracy. If you did that, it would be hard to find some ideolical construct to point a finger at, which seems to be his main objective.
Pushing your opinion is obviously okay in a newspaper. That's his right. I just won't be paying for it.
I've lately noticed a gradual decrease in the "detached analysis" coming out of The Guardian in favor of more idealist in-group circle-self-satisfaction. This probably feels good for some people but I don't think it's the way forward.
As an aside and I truly believe you in your case but I really want to do a Twitter / social media bot which counts the number of times people say "I'm unsubscribing" (from e.g. GitHub, Blizzard, Netflix, political party, media outlet) and compares them to the actual number of subscribers.
I suspect that any patterns wouldn't be that visible as people can be dissatisfied for many reasons but for major events it might be interesting.
I also want to do a bot that counts on "why am I being downvoted" "not sure why you are being downvoted" comments here and on Reddit! The bot could reply based on analysis of the user, if they are newbies, if they are troll, if they do actually know why but are just registering support etc ...
This makes the assumption that our priority is to change/fix things. I'm usually of this mindset too, but there's something to the argument of accepting what is and being calm and present to the moment.
We can't really know which approach is best, because we can't A/B test human life. Who knows... perhaps if everyone were calm and peaceful, much would change without activism.
If you want to change/fix things then being calm and present is a useful skill to be able to assess what the problem actually is and how to address it without being being drawn to actions that are not thought through.
Mindfulness does not imply you should not get angry at injustice, for example, but that you might want to observe that emotion arising and understand what you're actually angry about and why before you act. Sometimes you'll catch yourself being manipulated, or you'll realize you're angry about the wrong thing, or lashing out at the wrong person or entity.
As such I think the author would have done much better to focus on why mindfulness is not about inaction, and should not be used as an excuse for inaction. If someone wants to focus only inwards, that's got nothing to do with mindfulness, and in fact if they use mindfulness as an excuse for that, they are failing at being mindful if they're not mindful that it is just an excuse.
Mindfulness certainly can make some people more ready to accept life as it is, but the point then is that suffering for the sake of suffering is pretty irrational - if you can find a way to accept your current situation, then that is good. But accepting it does not mean you can not want to change it. But you should be aware of why, not just blindly fight for something that might not make you or others any happier.
I do think you're right that if everyone were calm and peaceful much would change without activism, but I also don't think mindfulness means no activism. Different activism, perhaps.
"there's something to the argument of accepting what is and being calm and present to the moment"
Ah, but that's what they want - something to reduce our immediate suffering and distract us with a pleasant fantasy so we can all keep slaving away at those dark satanic mills without question - "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions";-)
But more seriously, I'm not disagreeing with you, and I'm not wholly convinced by the article's argument. It strikes me as like saying antibiotics are bad because they don't encourage good hygiene and can be misused e.g. overuse on farm animals. Well yes those things might be true, but it isn't the antibiotics that are the problem. Its like technology, it in itself isn't good or bad, it is people and what they do with it that makes it one or the other.
> 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 might as well write an article jumping all over CBT: that by helping patients recognise Automatic Negative Thoughts and breaking the loop, psychologists are conspiring to keep society in the evil grip of capitalism.
This whole thing comes across as a strawman argument.
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 this might be by changing yourself but not necessarily the only way you can approach it.
A sane therapist will tell you if the situation you're in is not conducive to therapy.
Acceptance is a tool. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, which is why CBT and MCBT have more tools than mindfulness which is taught in a tiny version of ACT.
> 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.
I think the author doesn't understand mindfulness. Achieving mindfulness can only help you to know what exactly you want to change and what you can change.
It seems to me that the author favors radical change, either in general or he assumes everybody knows what exactly must be changed and how. Which I doubt.
"Capitalism" has spared the Western world increasingly more suffering, so there is no point in "going back" anywhere.
While I do favor corrections in terms of wealth distribution, I'd be hesitant to implement any unproven radical changes.
I fail to see why mindfulness meditation is any obstacle to this.
> "Capitalism" has spared the Western world increasingly more suffering
"Spared" implies that there's a clearly worse and inevitable alternative. Unless we shake off this ingrained cold-war mentality no other alternatives than status-quo will seem plausible.
Who is disputing that there are clearly worse alternatives? Pick almost any part of history.
You're talking about alternatives to the status-quo. Sure, there's lots to be improved, that's not what the disagreement is. The disagreement is whether to have a calm conversations and plan for a better future, or - like the Guardian suggests - burning it all to the ground because capitalism = bad.
> Who is disputing that there are clearly worse alternatives?
No one, and neither do I. That's why I added inevitable. Because the problem is the false dichotomy of Capitalism or Stalinism. It's obvious that the people calling for radical change are not even close to supporting Stalinism. But for some reason this is always assumed when just criticism towards Capitalism is presented.
> The disagreement is whether to have a calm conversations and plan for a better future
Moderates never ever find a "good" time for true change. It should always be delayed and slowed down until it eventually evaporates.
The rosary is great for contemplative prayer [0], but does your mind ever wander from what you 'should' be thinking about to various mundane things (last weekend's sporting events, your car needs an oil change, what to make for dinner)?
One part of mindfulness meditation is deliberate practice at directed focus, and that practice improves your ability to think about what you want to think about rather than what your mind wanders to. There's another common practice where you actually intentionally practice allowing your mind to wander, and consciously choose to dismiss those thoughts.
I see mindfulness meditation as orthogonal to actual prayer, a little axe-sharpening that improves not only my prayer life but my general thought processes as well. If I only have time for one and not the other, obviously prayer is more important.
[0] For people who don't know, the Rosary is a series of meditations on different aspects of the lives of Jesus and Mary and the ministry of Jesus, in the form of an easily-memorized sequence of rote prayers. The rote nature of the prayers allows the person saying the rosary to use the brain's fuzzy focus to think about each aspect in turn. In total it consists of the Apostle's Creed, 6 "Our Father"s, 53 "Hail Mary"s, 6 "Glory Be"s, and one "Hail Holy Queen", taking between 10 minutes (if you're in a rush) and 20 minutes (if you're sleepy).
Prayer is concentration. Mindfulness is not concentration.
There's a huge difference that you have to experience with practice in order to begin to appreciate. Learning how to get out of your typical all-consuming "thought loops" is a skill worth having and cultivating.
There 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" and everything that comes after it.
Where are the thoughts appearing in? That's you.
And staying in this perspective on purpose is mindfulness.
And being mindful sets a lot of things straight.
Radical change starts within and everything outside follows after it. And you don't need to do anything for it. In fact, sometimes you need not to.
"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 are a scarce few facts in there, about origins of the commercial training practice and size of the market, as well as a few companies that benefit from it. That's about it.
Opinion pieces, no matter how biased and disagreeable, are still necessary. Facts do not make one think on their own. I would like more facts in them.
If The Gardian stops telling people what they want to hear today, they'll have fewer paid members tomorrow.
There's more demand for spin based journalism (or activist journalism) than reporting nowadays. I suppose The Guardian - like others - are following the market trend.
Hey, I'm glad mindfulness helped you. I think my girlfriend might have BPD and i'm not sure what to do, would you mind sharing your story? Can PM if you would prefer.
The article has obviously nothing to do with mindfulness and is a cheap attack on capitalism from the growing socialist revolution propaganda machine.
Anyone who actually knows what mindfulness is can immediately see that they're building the biggest strawman ever with the sole purpose of forcing anti capitalist agenda down our throats.
Remember this: It used to be that news were facts and you formulated an opinion on them. Now the news is opinion and you're trying to figure out what the facts were.
This 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, you might be amenable to internalising other values beneficial to the company.
Article does say that the practice can make odious status quo palatable, removing a source of discontent and thus activism.
There are comparisons between the style McD was sold and mindfulness, but nowhere do I see implication that it is some kind of conspiracy.
Article has an ethical dig at neoliberal values at the end, equating them to magical thinking.
"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.
> nowhere do I see implication that it is some kind of conspiracy
Except in the title, for starters. And then in your comment, which is built on the assumption that mindfulness benefits corporations. Your whole argument is a stretch at best, but even if I were to concede that companies benefit from this, it is hardly proof that they would actively invest time, money and effort into playing this incredibly long game through which their gains are, at best, indirect. I think you're looking for a conspiracy theory where there is none.
Mindfulness is being aware of what goes on in your mind. How can anyone argue that it's a BAD?
How is staying blind to what you're actually thinking good in any way? All it does is make us a reactionary creature, which is exactly what you need to be to burn a whole society to the ground.
Thanks Guardian, this is exactly what we need.
More violence, more escalation, more rash decisions. Journalism 2019 - and they ask for your donations.
Another ranty tabloid-like article from MSM.
Meditation doesn't "depoliticize" stress, it allows you to move on for the moment and postpone your stress/thoughts.
Anyone doing meditation probably knows that those thoughts will come back, meditation is not exactly a "full stress-relief" like lifting weights, doing intense exercise,ranting,sex,etc.Arguably the deepest fears/stress don't go away depending on the severity, in which case, again, meditation is not to blame for ameliorating a troubled mind.
Feels like the author is just mad there's less "activism" because of meditation.Clearly upset about the fact that her wishes don't get attention while people get on better with their lives thanks to some "neat tricks" we've learned about our brain.
"Mindfulness" is really the most subjective thing ever, and it's rather hard for one to develop a technique to set their minds straight on their objective during the day.Looks like some people think this "life-style" is overrated just because they can't do it themselves.Obviously being a journalist/intaking a lot of news daily will make you more stressed than not,which makes it harder to "cope".
As 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.
"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 rotated a string of wooden prayer beads and recited the words Nam mô A Di Đà Phật ("Homage to Amitābha Buddha") before striking a match and dropping it on himself."
"Photographs of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm government. John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Đức on fire, "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.""
Please cite a source for this. Ethics are supposed to help with Buddhist practices towards achieving enlightenment from what I’ve read, not the other way round. If they came about as a result of meditation automatically, the Vinaya would not need to list so many rules for monks and nuns.
Neither meditation is said to be sufficient for enlightenment, at least to Buddhists who are not Zen (or Ch'an) practitioners.
We cannot just ask Siddhartha Gautama anymore about the practices and his words were mysticized and changed over generations, as were ethical rules and especially the added monastic rules.
Even Pali Canon is suspect in pieces and that's a more reliable source in the practices he reformed.
I didn't say it is "the" premise of Buddhism. I said it is a premise of Buddhism.
It is.
The story of Shakyamuni Buddha achieving enlightenment after 49 days of meditation under the Bodhi tree is pretty well known. There, of course, are a lot more antecedents to contemporary Buddhist thought and ethics than that one incident, but it's fair to say it's a pretty core part of the historical tradition, and precedes essentially everything that came after.
For context in this discussion, I am a practicing Zen Buddhist.
Just the first statement says alot about the writer:
> It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the
> ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful
> meditation may be the enemy of activism.
Every interaction I've had with mindfulness so far hasn't been that it was "sold", it was just simply offered. It's not an organized religion or ideology, from what I've seen there doesn't appear to be a hidden agenda. I've personally found it quite interesting to reflect on the subject of mindfulness and my (current) conclusions I have regarding how to live my life - there's a lot of overlap.
It's not something that exists to "help us cope with the ravages of capitalism". Political ideology aside, it's simply there to help you think and act more freely by understanding your thinking and acting. My friend who studies mindfulness says (para-quoting): "it's about understanding your actions and why you take them, it's about separating yourself from your immediate reality". I think most people could potentially benefit from such an idea. In general I believe people should take more time to "do nothing" and reflect.
As for being "the enemy of activism", if clear thinking is the enemy of activism, I think this says more about the current state of activism than it does about mindfulness. In general, I believe we shouldn't be striving to produce a society who dedicate their lives to activism. It's perfectly okay to be an activist, but there has to be more - life is short after all.
> Every interaction I've had with mindfulness so far hasn't been that it was "sold"
In defense of the author, it isn't really hard to come to the conlusion that mindfulness is mostly an attempt to sell stuff: Open the search engine of your choice, type in "mindfulness" and look at the results. Look at any pop-psychology, lifestyle or fashion magazine, and be greeted with advertorials for "calm" or similar apps.
Depression can be created by a hostile environment in individuals with no prior issues.
With a background of ever-increasing pressures on the individual to perform, the author rightfully calls out self-help for being "damage control procedures" only: practices that can help individuals cope with an untenable situation for longer.
The manner of the calling-out is hyperbole and full of opinions but in my opinion there is some truth at the core.
I would agree, or at least acknowledge that there was some truth here, if the worker's revolutions that have happened actually made anyone happier or less stressed.
The only thing I've seen in all my travels that made anyone any happier is strong family ties.
Russia, Cambodia and Vietnam are the ones I've personally visited (and I live in Berlin, so plenty of stories of life under communism here). But I've also spoken to people from Cuba and Venezuela.
It should be pointed out that mindfulness is one of many practices in various esoteric belief systems (typically with a view to complete self-realization) and when taken out of context and practiced alone it can have benefits (depending upon the individual) but is much more powerful when combined with all the practices of a belief system (Buddhism, Taoism, Bon etc).
I 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.
his arguments doesn't make sense. Using this way of thinking psychoteraphy is bad, because you are not fighting the system that damaged you. Of course he is using Zizek as authority and he treats his word of gospel, I think he lacks critical thinking that he advocates
I enjoyed the article. I see mindfulness being a truly helpful tool, but I can also see it as being a bludgeon to numb people to the status quo. The closest thing that I can think of that is similar is physical exercise. Physical exercise is legitimately helpful for maintaining a healthy life for nearly all (if not all) human beings, but there is definitely an industry around getting people to buy things to get them into shape with various probabilities of success. Similar to the author’s assertion about physical exercise, there are credible factors that affect physical health outside of just physical exercise such as diet/nutrition and physical/mental stress. Dealing with these other issues that affect physical health is more difficult and particularly when food-producing industries have a vested interest in getting people to eat more, and employers have a vested interest in getting the most out of their employees.
For what it is worth, The Guardian’s “the long read” section has the following in the subtitle, “The long read
In-depth reporting, essays and profiles“ [0]. I think they could stand to add a bit more guidance / messaging to indicate that this piece is separate from their reporting without harming their brand or appearing to insinuate some position over another.
Mindfulness walks you away from living on autopilot and having your thoughts driven by emotion. If it "numbs" you, I'm not sure what you're doing but it isn't anywhere near awareness.
People seem to really be addicted to this emotionally driven autopilot existence and seem over and over to insist that if you aren't being driven by emotion you're incapable of doing good. It seems to be the next wave of the attempt to reject the – what I would call – first order rationalism which builds its understanding of the world out of what easily fits into straightforward models and rejects or handwaves the existence of everything else.
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Anything remotely beneficial (any many things that aren't) will have a whole herd of self-help industrialists trying to sell it to you, they're better off ignored. Their presence really has no signal as to the legitimacy to what they're selling.
The example that I would give is how someone might view homelessness in San Francisco, the first time, the next few times, and then subsequent n times.
The first time a person can truly be utter shock. The next few times might remain uncomfortable, but less of a shock. In the subsequent n times, this person might stop seeing homelessness altogether except for the more gratuitous moments.
I am refining my thoughts here, and the part I see at issue is not mindfulness as a whole, but its partial or selective application. The author’s point is that the parts of mindfulness industry and parts of the economy as a whole benefit from the spread and application of the self-regulation/desensitization of mindfulness and it is in their interest to stop any sort of follow through action that would disrupt the status quo.
By stopping mindfulness at self-regulation and not following through with action, an outside observer would be hard pressed to find the difference between someone practicing this much mindfulness and someone who is just apathetic. I think this is where the calls to emotion that the author makes, and my use of the word “numb” comes in: it is question posed by someone else asking, “Do you not care?” In this way, I think the author is trying to argue that some of parts of this mindfulness industry is effectively selling mass-produced apathy and mass-produced self-regulation/compliance. To take this even farther, I think it would be possible to argue that this combination of desensitization and no-follow-through is basically learned helplessness [0].
To be completely honest with you, after writing all this out, I think the author could have made this point more clear.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 71.4 ms ] threadFor a more meaningful discussion of mindfulness, I recommend the "Mind The Mindfulness Hype" episode of The Psychology Podcast [1] . They dig into what the scientific method has to say to mindfulness, what studies have been made and what is missing, and what benefits can be realistically expected. And what's over the top hype.
[1] https://www.scottbarrykaufman.com/podcast/mind-the-mindfulne...
I personally find that a 'deterministic' view of life achieves that for me.
For whatever reason when I meditate I can only leverage it as a relaxation tool, as opposed to witnessing my thoughts occur, which I think is somewhat 'mindfulness'.
The best example I've experienced was being in an argument with my wife about something or other that had gotten heated to the point I was getting angry. But then I got a phone call from someone at one of my clients - I immediately had to be a different person for that call. Once it had finished I came back to my wife and felt like I entirely had the _choice_ as to whether I would be angry again. I was, in fact, almost certainly treading an automatic path down which I _would have_ made myself angry to continue from where we were. Instead, the obviousness of this was so apparent that I didn't - because it suddenly felt artificial.
The author seems to have a clear bias that radical == good, and this puts me off. Radical action can be good, and it can be bad. Mindfulness can help us see which case is which.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dispensationalism
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.
"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It doesn't sound like the author has done any mindfulness practice
If it helps one activist and million corporate drones and people looking for status quo, the practice is not on the whole a friend of activism. So what are the numbers?
Perhaps a study on how many activists quit when using or not using mindfulness techniques. Though the confounder is huge, people trying this have some sort of a psychological problem most of the time...
Good walk for two-three hours would do better than mindfullness session.
(hint: after about 25-40 minutes of intensive walking you start to burn fat primarily; this process has a side effect of endocannabinoids' release [1]; you get healthier and get high at same time; I am not including here release of brain-derived neurotrophic factor for you to discover it and effects of BDNF serum level increase on the mental state and thinking)
[1] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/38/5/536
From the opening line this seems to be coming across as little more than a virtue signalling piece for anti-Capitalists, and progresses into tired old tropes about Western consumerism.
"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'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...
Considering the situation of Afroamericans, I think you underappreciate the amount of lynchings, violence (not just by police) and structural discrimination that took place. All of that is at a record low, if still much too high.
There is still a lot of work to be done, but undoubtedly their situation has improved, long term.
Unfortunately it does, in two ways. One is objective, the other can be argued, but is my opinion nonetheless.
1) Inequality has seen the "poorer part of a society" slid backwards in many objectively measured standards of living, from infant mortality to overall life expectancy, to home ownership, retirement savings, and so on. Those are in absolute (and inflation adjusted when needed) values, worse than in the past.
2) Humans are not mere animals, and their progress, self-respect, etc are not just absolute, but also relative to the overall resources available. We don't compare ourselves to cavemen era people or to 1928 people, but to what's available today. More people having less share of their society's wealth is a slide backwards, even if each has more toys than someone in 1970s or 3000 B.C. had. In other words, "median share of society's wealth per person" is also a metric to keep track of over time.
(And the more important stuff, like homes, health care, education, are increasingly priced out of reach, even relative to 1970 or 1980, so that's a slide backwards whether seen relatively or in absolute terms).
I can directly speak for Germany, and the points you mention just don't hold true. Our whole society improved, despite rising inequality, perceived and measured.
For the US you cite particular measures. I'm not sure those are necessarily comprehensive and even if so, it's only a very tiny backslide, and also only for a relatively tiny percentage of the population.
Also I'm looking more at the long term trends, and those are looking up, in general, all over the world. Including infant mortality (the absolute number of children dying declined for at least 50 years straight, despite more children being born up to relatively recently, see peak child phenomenon), life expectancy and absolute poverty.
Individual wealth is not about the share of the total wealth in a society. At least for me it is about suffering, and the reasons for suffering are indeed decreasing. Maybe not for any time period and any country you choose, but overall, yes.
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).
Reuters seems reliable and don't seem to want to perpetuate partisanship in the way that The Guardian has lately. Having an agenda is fine, having that agenda be perpetuating pointless conflict with "the others", and proving how intelligent we in the in-group are is not very useful. This article was just the final straw. I come from Norway which isn't a two-party nation so I think this enters into my dislike for the black and white thinking that seems to be growing in the Anglosphere where I currently live.
In general, complaining that the pop culture version of something is shallow and ineffective compared to a full understanding (which ironically, the author lacks), could be generalized without lack of accuracy. If you did that, it would be hard to find some ideolical construct to point a finger at, which seems to be his main objective.
Pushing your opinion is obviously okay in a newspaper. That's his right. I just won't be paying for it.
I've lately noticed a gradual decrease in the "detached analysis" coming out of The Guardian in favor of more idealist in-group circle-self-satisfaction. This probably feels good for some people but I don't think it's the way forward.
That narrowing is induced by neoliberal ideology, as he thinks. I do too, by the way.
He even introduced me to "disimagination" neologism which I greatly admire, and I am not even done with the article.
I suspect that any patterns wouldn't be that visible as people can be dissatisfied for many reasons but for major events it might be interesting.
I also want to do a bot that counts on "why am I being downvoted" "not sure why you are being downvoted" comments here and on Reddit! The bot could reply based on analysis of the user, if they are newbies, if they are troll, if they do actually know why but are just registering support etc ...
We can't really know which approach is best, because we can't A/B test human life. Who knows... perhaps if everyone were calm and peaceful, much would change without activism.
Mindfulness does not imply you should not get angry at injustice, for example, but that you might want to observe that emotion arising and understand what you're actually angry about and why before you act. Sometimes you'll catch yourself being manipulated, or you'll realize you're angry about the wrong thing, or lashing out at the wrong person or entity.
As such I think the author would have done much better to focus on why mindfulness is not about inaction, and should not be used as an excuse for inaction. If someone wants to focus only inwards, that's got nothing to do with mindfulness, and in fact if they use mindfulness as an excuse for that, they are failing at being mindful if they're not mindful that it is just an excuse.
Mindfulness certainly can make some people more ready to accept life as it is, but the point then is that suffering for the sake of suffering is pretty irrational - if you can find a way to accept your current situation, then that is good. But accepting it does not mean you can not want to change it. But you should be aware of why, not just blindly fight for something that might not make you or others any happier.
I do think you're right that if everyone were calm and peaceful much would change without activism, but I also don't think mindfulness means no activism. Different activism, perhaps.
Ah, but that's what they want - something to reduce our immediate suffering and distract us with a pleasant fantasy so we can all keep slaving away at those dark satanic mills without question - "the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions";-)
But more seriously, I'm not disagreeing with you, and I'm not wholly convinced by the article's argument. It strikes me as like saying antibiotics are bad because they don't encourage good hygiene and can be misused e.g. overuse on farm animals. Well yes those things might be true, but it isn't the antibiotics that are the problem. Its like technology, it in itself isn't good or bad, it is people and what they do with it that makes it one or the other.
So the author is upset that Kabat-Zinn omitted to name "capitalism" specifically and railing against its evils in a self-help book?
One might as well write an article jumping all over CBT: that by helping patients recognise Automatic Negative Thoughts and breaking the loop, psychologists are conspiring to keep society in the evil grip of capitalism.
This whole thing comes across as a strawman argument.
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 this might be by changing yourself but not necessarily the only way you can approach it.
A sane therapist will tell you if the situation you're in is not conducive to therapy.
Acceptance is a tool. If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, which is why CBT and MCBT have more tools than mindfulness which is taught in a tiny version of ACT.
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.
It seems to me that the author favors radical change, either in general or he assumes everybody knows what exactly must be changed and how. Which I doubt.
"Capitalism" has spared the Western world increasingly more suffering, so there is no point in "going back" anywhere.
While I do favor corrections in terms of wealth distribution, I'd be hesitant to implement any unproven radical changes.
I fail to see why mindfulness meditation is any obstacle to this.
"Spared" implies that there's a clearly worse and inevitable alternative. Unless we shake off this ingrained cold-war mentality no other alternatives than status-quo will seem plausible.
You're talking about alternatives to the status-quo. Sure, there's lots to be improved, that's not what the disagreement is. The disagreement is whether to have a calm conversations and plan for a better future, or - like the Guardian suggests - burning it all to the ground because capitalism = bad.
No one, and neither do I. That's why I added inevitable. Because the problem is the false dichotomy of Capitalism or Stalinism. It's obvious that the people calling for radical change are not even close to supporting Stalinism. But for some reason this is always assumed when just criticism towards Capitalism is presented.
> The disagreement is whether to have a calm conversations and plan for a better future
Moderates never ever find a "good" time for true change. It should always be delayed and slowed down until it eventually evaporates.
I'll stick with the Rosary thanks.
One part of mindfulness meditation is deliberate practice at directed focus, and that practice improves your ability to think about what you want to think about rather than what your mind wanders to. There's another common practice where you actually intentionally practice allowing your mind to wander, and consciously choose to dismiss those thoughts.
I see mindfulness meditation as orthogonal to actual prayer, a little axe-sharpening that improves not only my prayer life but my general thought processes as well. If I only have time for one and not the other, obviously prayer is more important.
[0] For people who don't know, the Rosary is a series of meditations on different aspects of the lives of Jesus and Mary and the ministry of Jesus, in the form of an easily-memorized sequence of rote prayers. The rote nature of the prayers allows the person saying the rosary to use the brain's fuzzy focus to think about each aspect in turn. In total it consists of the Apostle's Creed, 6 "Our Father"s, 53 "Hail Mary"s, 6 "Glory Be"s, and one "Hail Holy Queen", taking between 10 minutes (if you're in a rush) and 20 minutes (if you're sleepy).
There's a huge difference that you have to experience with practice in order to begin to appreciate. Learning how to get out of your typical all-consuming "thought loops" is a skill worth having and cultivating.
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" and everything that comes after it.
Where are the thoughts appearing in? That's you.
And staying in this perspective on purpose is mindfulness.
And being mindful sets a lot of things straight.
Radical change starts within and everything outside follows after it. And you don't need to do anything for it. In fact, sometimes you need not to.
> 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.
I think the problem is that the author thinks his opinions are facts,though.
Opinion pieces, no matter how biased and disagreeable, are still necessary. Facts do not make one think on their own. I would like more facts in them.
> still necessary.
I don't disagree, I just believe they should be very clearly labelled as such.
There's more demand for spin based journalism (or activist journalism) than reporting nowadays. I suppose The Guardian - like others - are following the market trend.
Like what?
This totally rewired my brain and I had to go to therapy. There I was recommended mindfulness meditation.
It really helped me a lot to get rid of racing thoughts and finally get some sleep and general peace of mind.
Anyone who actually knows what mindfulness is can immediately see that they're building the biggest strawman ever with the sole purpose of forcing anti capitalist agenda down our throats.
Remember this: It used to be that news were facts and you formulated an opinion on them. Now the news is opinion and you're trying to figure out what the facts were.
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.
Article does say that the practice can make odious status quo palatable, removing a source of discontent and thus activism.
There are comparisons between the style McD was sold and mindfulness, but nowhere do I see implication that it is some kind of conspiracy.
Article has an ethical dig at neoliberal values at the end, equating them to magical thinking.
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.
Except in the title, for starters. And then in your comment, which is built on the assumption that mindfulness benefits corporations. Your whole argument is a stretch at best, but even if I were to concede that companies benefit from this, it is hardly proof that they would actively invest time, money and effort into playing this incredibly long game through which their gains are, at best, indirect. I think you're looking for a conspiracy theory where there is none.
How is staying blind to what you're actually thinking good in any way? All it does is make us a reactionary creature, which is exactly what you need to be to burn a whole society to the ground.
Thanks Guardian, this is exactly what we need. More violence, more escalation, more rash decisions. Journalism 2019 - and they ask for your donations.
Anyone doing meditation probably knows that those thoughts will come back, meditation is not exactly a "full stress-relief" like lifting weights, doing intense exercise,ranting,sex,etc.Arguably the deepest fears/stress don't go away depending on the severity, in which case, again, meditation is not to blame for ameliorating a troubled mind.
Feels like the author is just mad there's less "activism" because of meditation.Clearly upset about the fact that her wishes don't get attention while people get on better with their lives thanks to some "neat tricks" we've learned about our brain.
"Mindfulness" is really the most subjective thing ever, and it's rather hard for one to develop a technique to set their minds straight on their objective during the day.Looks like some people think this "life-style" is overrated just because they can't do it themselves.Obviously being a journalist/intaking a lot of news daily will make you more stressed than not,which makes it harder to "cope".
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 rotated a string of wooden prayer beads and recited the words Nam mô A Di Đà Phật ("Homage to Amitābha Buddha") before striking a match and dropping it on himself."
"Photographs of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm government. John F. Kennedy said in reference to a photograph of Đức on fire, "No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.""
By stripping ethics from it you would stop all its activism.
We cannot just ask Siddhartha Gautama anymore about the practices and his words were mysticized and changed over generations, as were ethical rules and especially the added monastic rules.
Even Pali Canon is suspect in pieces and that's a more reliable source in the practices he reformed.
Here is a good starting point for understanding what is: http://ftp.budaedu.org/ebooks/pdf/EN074.pdf
It is.
The story of Shakyamuni Buddha achieving enlightenment after 49 days of meditation under the Bodhi tree is pretty well known. There, of course, are a lot more antecedents to contemporary Buddhist thought and ethics than that one incident, but it's fair to say it's a pretty core part of the historical tradition, and precedes essentially everything that came after.
For context in this discussion, I am a practicing Zen Buddhist.
Meditation is for going beyond all that.
> I am a practicing Zen Buddhist
Who?
> It is sold as a force that can help us cope with the
> ravages of capitalism, but with its inward focus, mindful
> meditation may be the enemy of activism.
Every interaction I've had with mindfulness so far hasn't been that it was "sold", it was just simply offered. It's not an organized religion or ideology, from what I've seen there doesn't appear to be a hidden agenda. I've personally found it quite interesting to reflect on the subject of mindfulness and my (current) conclusions I have regarding how to live my life - there's a lot of overlap.
It's not something that exists to "help us cope with the ravages of capitalism". Political ideology aside, it's simply there to help you think and act more freely by understanding your thinking and acting. My friend who studies mindfulness says (para-quoting): "it's about understanding your actions and why you take them, it's about separating yourself from your immediate reality". I think most people could potentially benefit from such an idea. In general I believe people should take more time to "do nothing" and reflect.
As for being "the enemy of activism", if clear thinking is the enemy of activism, I think this says more about the current state of activism than it does about mindfulness. In general, I believe we shouldn't be striving to produce a society who dedicate their lives to activism. It's perfectly okay to be an activist, but there has to be more - life is short after all.
In defense of the author, it isn't really hard to come to the conlusion that mindfulness is mostly an attempt to sell stuff: Open the search engine of your choice, type in "mindfulness" and look at the results. Look at any pop-psychology, lifestyle or fashion magazine, and be greeted with advertorials for "calm" or similar apps.
With a background of ever-increasing pressures on the individual to perform, the author rightfully calls out self-help for being "damage control procedures" only: practices that can help individuals cope with an untenable situation for longer.
The manner of the calling-out is hyperbole and full of opinions but in my opinion there is some truth at the core.
The only thing I've seen in all my travels that made anyone any happier is strong family ties.
Which ones are you thinking of?
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.
For what it is worth, The Guardian’s “the long read” section has the following in the subtitle, “The long read In-depth reporting, essays and profiles“ [0]. I think they could stand to add a bit more guidance / messaging to indicate that this piece is separate from their reporting without harming their brand or appearing to insinuate some position over another.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/the-long-read
People seem to really be addicted to this emotionally driven autopilot existence and seem over and over to insist that if you aren't being driven by emotion you're incapable of doing good. It seems to be the next wave of the attempt to reject the – what I would call – first order rationalism which builds its understanding of the world out of what easily fits into straightforward models and rejects or handwaves the existence of everything else.
--
Anything remotely beneficial (any many things that aren't) will have a whole herd of self-help industrialists trying to sell it to you, they're better off ignored. Their presence really has no signal as to the legitimacy to what they're selling.
The example that I would give is how someone might view homelessness in San Francisco, the first time, the next few times, and then subsequent n times.
The first time a person can truly be utter shock. The next few times might remain uncomfortable, but less of a shock. In the subsequent n times, this person might stop seeing homelessness altogether except for the more gratuitous moments.
I am refining my thoughts here, and the part I see at issue is not mindfulness as a whole, but its partial or selective application. The author’s point is that the parts of mindfulness industry and parts of the economy as a whole benefit from the spread and application of the self-regulation/desensitization of mindfulness and it is in their interest to stop any sort of follow through action that would disrupt the status quo.
By stopping mindfulness at self-regulation and not following through with action, an outside observer would be hard pressed to find the difference between someone practicing this much mindfulness and someone who is just apathetic. I think this is where the calls to emotion that the author makes, and my use of the word “numb” comes in: it is question posed by someone else asking, “Do you not care?” In this way, I think the author is trying to argue that some of parts of this mindfulness industry is effectively selling mass-produced apathy and mass-produced self-regulation/compliance. To take this even farther, I think it would be possible to argue that this combination of desensitization and no-follow-through is basically learned helplessness [0].
To be completely honest with you, after writing all this out, I think the author could have made this point more clear.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
Mindfulness and learned helplessness are diametric opposites.
I'd say the article is claiming one is "less likely", not incapable.
> they're better off ignored.
So you advocate inaction? Seems like the author may have a point :)