McMindfulness - excerpts and insights from the book by Ronald Purser

[Milos Uzelac]

The full title of the book:

McMindfulness - How Mindfulness became the New Capitalist Spirituality by Ronald Purser. 

Chapter One: What Mindfulness Revolution?

"Mindfulness is mainstream endorsed by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, Goldie Hawn, and Ruby Wax. While meditation coaches, monks, and neuroscientists rub shoulders with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the founders of this movement have grown evangelical. 

Prophesying that it's a hybrid of science and meditative discipline "has the potential to ignite a universal or global renaissance", the inventor of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), Jon Kabat-Zinn, has bigger ambitions than conquering stress. 

Mindfulness, he proclaims, "may actually be the only promise the species and the planet have for making it through the next couple of hundred years." 

The Author, Ronald Purser:

"I am skeptical. Anything that offers success in our unjust society without trying to change it is not revolutionary - it just helps people cope. However, it could be making things worse. Instead of encouraging radical action, it says that the causes of suffering are disproportionately inside us, not in the political and economic framework that shapes how we live.

And yet mindfulness zealots believe that paying closer attention to the present moment without passing judgment has the revolutionary power to transform the whole world. 

Don't get me wrong. There are certainly worthy dimensions to mindfulness practice. Turning out mental rumination does help reduce stress, as well as chronic anxiety and other maladies. Becoming more aware of automatic reactions can make people calmer and potentially kinder. 

But that isn't the issue here. 

The problem is the product they're selling, and how it's been packaged. Mindfulness is nothing more than basic concentration training.

Although derived from Buddhism, it's been stripped of the teachings on ethics that accompanied it, as well as the liberating aim of dissolving attachment to a false sense of self while enacting compassion for all other beings. 

What remains is a tool of self-discipline, disguised as self-help. Instead of setting practitioners free, it helps them adjust to the very conditions that caused their suffering. A truly revolutionary movement would seek to overthrow this dysfunctional system, but mindfulness only serves to reinforce it's destructive logic. 

The neoliberal order has imposed itself by stealth in the past few decades, widening inequality in the pursuit of corporate wealth. People are expected to adapt to what this model demands of them. 

Stress has been pathologized and privatized, and the burden of managing it outsourced to individuals."

Author's conclusion in the chapter:

"Reducing suffering is a noble aim and it should be encouraged. But to do this effectively teachers of mindfulness need to acknowledge that personal stress has societal causes. 

By failing to address collective suffering and systemic change that might remove it, they rob mindfulness of its revolutionary potential, reducing it to something banal that keeps people focused on themselves."

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[Milos Uzelac]

Chapter One, subchapter two: À Private Freedom. 

"The fundamental message of the mindfulness movement is that the underlying cause of dissatisfaction and distress is in our heads. 

By failing to pay attention to what actually happens in each moment, we get lost in regrets about the past and fears for the future, which make us unhappy. 

The man often labeled as the father of modern mindfulness, Jon Kabat-Zinn, calls this a "thinking disease." 

Learning to focus turns down the volume on circular thought, so Kabat-Zinn's diagnosis is that our "entire society is suffering from attention deficit disorder - big time."

But as Ron Purser points out:

"Other sources of cultural malaise are not discussed. 

Mindfulness advocates perhaps unwittingly are providing support for the status quo. 

Rather than discussing how attention is monetized and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Apple, they locate the crisis in our minds. It is not the nature of the capitalist system that is inherently problematic; rather, it is the failure of individuals to be mindful and resilient in a precarious and uncertain economy."

Ron Purser's points of criticism of the underlying assumptions of the movement:

"The political naiveté involved is stunning. The revolution being touted occurs not through protests and collective struggle but in the heads of atomized individuals.

"It is not the revolution of the desperate and disenfranchised in society," notes Chris-Goto Jones, a scholarly critic of the movement's ideas, "but rather a 'peaceful revolution' being led by white, middle-class Americans." 

The goals are unclear, beyond peace of mind in our own private worlds. 

By practicing mindfulness, individual freedom is supposedly found within "pure awareness", undistracted by external corrupting influences.

All we need to do is close our eyes and watch our breath. And that's the crux of the supposed revolution the world is slowly changed - one mindful individual at the time. "

But as the author comments:

"This political philosophy is oddly reminiscent of George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism." With the retreat to the private sphere, mindfulness becomes a religion of the self. The idea of a public sphere is being eroded, and any trickle-down effect of compassion is by chance. 

As a result, notes the political theorist Wendy Brown," the body politic ceases to be a body, but is, rather, a group of individual entrepreneurs and consumers." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[Milos Uzelac]

Chapter One, subchapter two: À Private Freedom Part 2.

"Mindfulness like positive psychology and the broader happiness industry has depoliticized and privatized stress. 

If we are unhappy about being unemployed, losing our health insurance, and seeing our children incur massive debt through college loans, it is our responsibility to learn to be more mindful. 

Jon Kabat-Zinn assures us that "happiness is an inside job" that simply requires us to attend to the present moment mindfully and purposely without judgment. 

Purser concludes:

"Guided by the therapeutic ethos aimed at enhancing the mental and emotional resilience of individuals, it endorses neoliberal assumptions that everyone is free to choose their responses, manage negative emotions, and "flourish" through various modes of self-care."

"If this version of mindfulness had a mantra, its adherents would be chanting " I, me and mine. "

As Ron Purser's college C. W. Huntington observes:

"The first question most Westerners ask when considering the practice is: "What's in it for me?"

Mindfulness is sold and marketed as a vehicle for personal gain and gratification. The so-called mindfulness revolution meekly accepts the dictates of the marketplace."

Purser sums up the chapter, from a quote from another fellow skeptic David Forbes, who sums this up in his book Mindfulness and Its Discontents:

"Which self wants to be de-stressed and happy? Mine! The Minefulness Industrial Complex wants to help you be happy, promote your personal brand - and of course, make and take some bucks (yours and mine) along the way. The simple premise is that by practicing mindfulness, by being more mindful, you will be happy, regardless of what thoughts and feelings you have, or your actions in the world. 

Of course, this is a reflection of capitalist norms, which distort many things in the modern world. However, the mindfulness movement actively embraces them, dismissing critics who ask if it really needs to be this way."

Edited April 18, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[Milos Uzelac]

Chapter One, subchapter three: The Commodification of Mindfulness. 

"The term "McMindfulness was coined by Miles Neale, a Buddhist teacher, and psychotherapist, who described "a feeding frenzy of spiritual practices that provide immediate nutrition but no long term sustenance." 

Although this label is apt, it has deeper connotations. The contemporary mindfulness fad is the entrepreneurial equal of McDonald's. The founder of the latter, Ray Kroc, created the fast-food industry." 

"Very early on, when selling milkshakes, Kroc saw the franchising potential of a restaurant chain in San Bernandino, California. He made a deal to serve as a franchising agent for the McDonald's brothers. Soon afterward, he bought them out and grew the restaurant chain into a global empire.

Both Kroc and Kabat-Zinn had a remarkable capacity for opportunity recognition: the ability to perceive an untapped market need, create new openings for business, and perceive innovative ways for delivering products and services.

Kroc saw his chance to provide busy Americans instant access to food that would be delivered consistently through automation, standardization, and discipline. He recruited ambitious and driven franchise owners and continued to expand the reach of McDonald's by identifying new markets that would be drawn to fast food at bargain prices."

"Similarly, Kabat-Zinn perceived an opportunity to give stressed-out Americans easy access to mindfulness vis-a-vis MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction), his masterstroke was the branding of mindfulness as a secular crypto-Buddhist spirituality."

Ronald Purser concludes the chapter by stating:

"Since the publication of, "Beyond McMindfulness", I have observed with great trepidation how mindfulness has been oversold and commodified, reduced to a technique for just about any instrumental purpose."

"Void of a moral compass or ethical commitments, unmoored from a vision of the social good, the commodification of mindfulness keeps it anchored in the ethos of the market."

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[Milos Uzelac]

Chapter One, subchapter four: A Capitalist Spirituality.

"This has come about partly because proponents of mindfulness believe that the practice is apolitical, and so the avoidance of moral inquiry and the reluctance to consider a vision of the social good are intertwined

Laissez-faire mindfulness lets dominant systems decide such questions as "the good".

It is simply assumed that ethical behavior will arise "naturally" from practice and the teacher's "embodiment" of soft-spoken niceness, or through the happenstance of inductive self-discovery.

However, the claim that "major ethical changes come intrinsically from paying attention to the present moment, non-judgementally" is patently flawed.

The emphasis on "non-judgmental awareness" can just as easily disable one's moral intelligence.

It is unlikely that the Pentagon would invest in mindfulness if more mindful soldiers refused en masse to go to war.

Mindfulness is the latest iteration of a capitalist spirituality whose lineage dates back to the privatization of religion in Western societies. This began a few hundred years ago as a way of reconciling faith with modern scientific knowledge. The private experience could not be measured by science, so religion was internalized.

Important figures in the process include the nineteenth-century philosopher William James, who was instrumental in psychologizing religion, as well as Abraham Maslow, whose humanistic psychology provided the impetus for the New Age movement.

In Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion,  Jeremy Carrete, and Richard King argue that Asian wisdom traditions have been subject to colonization and commodification since the eighteenth century, producing a highly individualistic spirituality, perfectly accommodated to dominant cultural values and requiring no substantive changes in lifestyle.

Such individualistic spirituality is clearly linked to the neoliberal agenda of privatization, especially when masked by the ambiguous language used in mindfulness.

Market forces are already exploiting the momentum of the mindfulness movement, reorienting its goals to a highly circumscribed individual realm.

Privatized mindfulness practice is easily coopted and confined to what Carrette and King describe as an "accommodationist orientation" that seeks to "pacify feelings of anxiety and disquiet at the individual level rather than seeking to challenge the social, political and economic inequalities that cause such distress."

"However", as Ron Purser points out, "the commitment to a privatized and psychologized mindfulness is political."

"It amounts to what Byung-Chul Han calls "psycho-politics", in which contemporary capitalism seeks to harness the psyche as a productive force.

Mindfulness-based interventions fulfill this purpose by therapeutically optimizing individuals to make them "mentally fit", attentive and resilient so they may keep functioning within the system. Such capitulation seems like the farthest thing from a revolution and more like a quietist surrender.

Mindfulness is positioned as a force that can help us cope with the noxious influence of capitalism. But because what it offers is so easily assimilated by the market, its potential for social and political transformation is neutered."

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2021 by Milos Uzelac

[Milos Uzelac]

Chapter One, subchapter four: A Capitalist Spirituality Part 2

''Leaders of the mindfulness movement believe that capitalism and spirituality can be reconciled; they want to relieve the stress of individuals without having to look deeper and more broadly at social, economic, and political causes."

"A truly revolutionary mindfulness would challenge the Western sense of entitlement to happiness irrespective of ethical conduct. However, mindfulness programs do not ask executives to examine how their managerial decisions and corporate policies have institutionalized greed, ill will, and delusion, which Buddhist mindfulness seeks to eradicate."

"Instead the practice is being sold to executives as a way to de-stress, improve productivity and focus, and bounce back from working eighty-hour weeks. They may well be "meditating", but it works like taking an aspirin for a headache. Once the pain goes away, it is business as usual.

Even if individuals become nicer people, the corporate agenda for maximizing profits does not change.

Trickle down-mindfulness, like trickle-down economics, is a cover for the maintenance of power.

 

 

[Milos Uzelac]

Chapter Two, Neoliberal Mindfulness.

"Mindfulness is hostage to the neoliberal mindset: 1. it must be put to use, 2. it must be proved that it "works", 3. it must deliver the desired results.

This prevents it from being offered as a tool of resistance, restricting it instead to a technique for "self-care". It becomes a  therapeutic solvent - a universal elixir - for dissolving the mental and emotional obstacles to better performance and increased efficiency."

"This logic pervades most institutions, from public services to large corporations, the quest for resilience is driven by the dictum: "Adapt - or perish."

"The result is an obsessive self-monitoring of inner states, inducing social myopia. Self-absorption trumps concerns about the outside world. As Byung-Chul Han observes, this reinvents the Puritan work ethic:

"Endlessly working at self-improvement resembles the self-examination and self-monitoring of Protestantism, which represents a technology of subjectivization and domination in its own right. Now, instead of searching out sins, one hunts down negative thoughts."

"This inevitably appeals to consumers who value spirituality as a way of enhancing their mental and physical health. Not only has mindfulness been repackaged as a novel technique of psychotherapy, but its utility is commercially marketed as self-help. This branding reinforces the notion that spiritual practices are indeed an individual's private concern. And once privatized, these practices are easily co-opted for social, economic and political control."

Ronald Purser argument in his original article "Beyond McMindfulness" which inspired him into writing this book:

"Decontextualizing mindfulness from its original liberative and transformative purpose, as well as its foundation in social ethics, amounts to a Faustian bargain. Rather than applying mindfulness as a means to awaken individuals and organizations from the unwholesome roots of greed, ill will, and delusion, it is usually being refashioned into a banal, therapeutic, self-help technique that can actually reinforce those roots."