Headline at The Nation. Excerpt:
Rooted in a centuries-old Buddhist meditation practice, mindfulness, like the religion it originates from, is based on the Four Noble Truths, the first of which loosely translates to “Life is suffering.”...
Today’s corporatized mindfulness is largely a do-it-yourself practice (with countless books, meditation apps, podcasts, gurus, and seminars) filling the vacuum of a lonely culture obsessed with self-optimization, mind hacks, and shortcuts to self-care. Modern mindfulness is often sold as evidence-based, sanitized of any cultural baggage—neuroscience with a dash of what Jon Kabat-Zinn, known as the father of the modern-day mindfulness movement, calls “the essence of Buddhism.” It’s at once secular and clinical yet sacred....
The article is written by Zachary Siegel, who interviews Ronald Purser (author of
"McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality"). Excerpt:
ZS: Your book chronicles various spiritual movements rising and falling in America—the rise of New Age in the 1970s and Transcendental Meditation in the ’90s. Who is behind the mindfulness boom?
RP: In terms of other social movements, the mindfulness movement is an elite social movement, which started with white elite males like Dale Carnegie and the prosperity-gospel guys. It’s quite unlike more grassroots activist movements like the civil rights movement, where you could see a more communitarian strand of mindfulness, run by people of color. There was coming together, talking about our oppression, sharing our vulnerabilities and working together to resist. That was very spiritually and religiously motivated and required a tremendous amount of mindfulness, but in collectives. Nonviolence takes a lot of mindfulness to pull off, but you can’t do it alone. It’s a stark contrast to what we see with these very rich, wealthy white men who are the promoters, who I call mindfulness merchants, and they’re spouting that mindfulness is good for everybody, it’s universal. These differentials in power trouble me, and I think we need to interrogate these differentials....
ZS: What was going on in Google’s mindfulness program?
RP: The Search Inside Yourself seminar promised the program “increases productivity, enhances leadership effectiveness and supports happiness.” What more could an employer want? The workshop was an amalgam of childish icebreakers, turn-to-your partner exercises, three-minute breathing meditations, and a hodgepodge of superficial materials on emotional intelligence as a pathway to career success, along with the usual neurobabble that meditation changes your brain....
ZS: In breaking down the science behind mindfulness, you write, “The widespread belief that there is compelling clinical proof that ‘mindfulness works’ is simply not supported by the scientific evidence.” Is “evidence based” built on a house of cards?
RP: One of the problems is a big gap between the rhetoric on the so-called science of mindfulness and the actual science. If you read the journal articles, there are a lot of qualifications and hedging. But when it is translated into the public domain—like in Harvard Business Review, which claimed, “Mindfulness Can Literally Change Your Brain”—that’s where you see sweeping claims exaggerating the efficacy....
Mindfulness is a very unregulated industry. Unlike psychotherapy.... I know for a fact that some corporate mindfulness trainers just take an online course and in eight or 10 weeks they reinvent themselves. They were probably corporate trainers in some other area, and now they’re experts in mindfulness training....
ADDED: Considering buying this book, I read the 1-star review (there's only one). Excerpt:
... I don't think it was a very bright idea to deface a Buddhist statue on the cover. Did somebody skip sensitivity training? Oh, go ahead and explain that to an Asian Buddhist seeing this in a bookstore, with some deep philosophical discourse on love, peace, harmony or the "dark side of mindfulness"....
Here's the cover:
५२ टिप्पण्या:
Ah, pining for Crack MC now that mindfulness is here.
Annie C. said what I was going to say.
Now, by rule, I must be angry at Annie C.
(with countless books, meditation apps, podcasts, gurus, and seminars)
I understand and will obey.
mindfulness is ...at once secular and clinical yet sacred.
I did a little research based on a previous post here, and the "clinical" stuff seemed scammy, e.g. no control groups, "measuring" feelings, etc., and they seemed to pointedly avoid actually measuring athletic performance, which is one of the selling points.
Look up "Let Your Mind Alone!" in your LOC Thurber.
When Gwyneth Paltrow and her recent GOOP brand mindfulness seminar-turned-debacle can be panned and pilloried not just in the media but by its attendees, it's a sign the shark has been jumped.
Mindfulness is what is known as "Chick Crack". Like tarot cards are palm-reading.
#fakesacred
#Everestviahelicopter
#EveshittestedGod
#awomanandhermoneyaresoonparted
This crap probably started with someone trying to fleece people with borderline personality disorder.
Shocked that rhhardin didn't tell us it was calming distraction for unsatisfied and arguing women.
If we were properly mindful, we'd Hate Whitey.
Got it.
It is The Nation after all.
Yeah, I thought of Crack Emcee when I was writing the post. And I actually think he is reading this.
He's here... in spirit.
Modern mindfulness is often sold as evidence-based, sanitized of any cultural baggage—neuroscience with a dash of what Jon Kabat-Zinn, known as the father of the modern-day mindfulness movement, calls “the essence of Buddhism.” It’s at once secular and clinical yet sacred.
Clearly, over at the Nation they prefer Howard Zinn to Jon Kabat-Zinn, and ideological baggage over "cultural baggage".
It’s quite unlike more grassroots activist movements like the civil rights movement, where you could see a more communitarian strand of mindfulness, run by people of color. There was coming together, talking about our oppression, sharing our vulnerabilities and working together to resist. That was very spiritually and religiously motivated and required a tremendous amount of mindfulness, but in collectives. Nonviolence takes a lot of mindfulness to pull off, but you can’t do it alone. It’s a stark contrast to what we see with these very rich, wealthy white men who are the promoters, who I call mindfulness merchants, and they’re spouting that mindfulness is good for everybody, it’s universal. These differentials in power trouble me, and I think we need to interrogate these differentials...
I've always assumed the whole movement movement was a liberal/corporate construct designed to sell crap.
Is that a permanent anger Birkel, or is it limited to today only?
where you could see a more communitarian strand of mindfulness, run by people of color.
What Color is Your Mindfulness?
Sounds a lot like modern education.
Teach the kids reading "skills" and how to think "critically" without giving them anything to read or anything to think about.
I liked older corporate self-help fads.
The Zen-aggression one, the popularity of Musashi's "Book of Five Rings".
I think Larry Ellison never recovered from that, and has tried to live like a Samurai since.
The internal guerrilla war one, in Peters&Watermans "In Search of Excellence".
Sadly eclipsed by process, regulation and compliance.
St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, invented Western mediation over 400 years ago. His feast day is next week.
I should add that St. John's church at Creighton has a death mask of Ignatius. Also a beautiful sculpture of him in front of the library. Soldier. Scholar. Saint.
Oh, Sun Tzu, where have you gone? Did you lose?
Annie C. said...
Is that a permanent anger Birkel, or is it limited to today only?
I suspect Birkel is fully present in his angry of this moment. He is not dwelling on anger from the past, nor worrying about anger yet to come...
I like to check the bad reviews first. This one is a doozy. Kevin Williamson wrote about the vast electronic apparatus of self-moronization. A splendid example.
Marianne Williams expects the same from voters. Listen to her campaign ad,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sYK7lm3UKg
Confucius, I think, is the precise opposite of the navel-gazing tendency.
His is a fine corporate-ethic model.
I had one full time job for 6 years during my career.
The rest of my career I worked as a freelancer and consultant.
Saluting the corporate flag and mouthing the corporate pieties, I couldn't stand it.
Corporations have no business fucking around with my life and mind in this fashion. I refused to allow them to do it.
As I told Althouse, I'm an outlaw. Always have been. Not the kind of outlaw who goes down in a blaze of glory to thrill the ladies. The kind of outlaw who figures out how to live successfully on his own terms.
Shame the interviewer needs to shovel stupid into what appears to be a straightforward critique of the current "mindfulness" fad that might be salutary to The Nation's cat-lady subscribers. I.e., the sort of people who don't have the sense to be skeptical about about their HR department's processing, canning, and distribution of "spiritual" mcNuggets.
That was very spiritually and religiously motivated and required a tremendous amount of mindfulness, but in collectives.
Lol, jayz, what does that even mean? Pure duckspeak. Everything's gotta get shoe-horned into the ever-shrinking bounds of The Narrative, I guess.
Blaze of glory is a good way to go.
I have seen many of the alternatives.
The only problem with a blaze is the collateral damage, if there is collateral to damage.
Well, a godless nation has to find god somewhere. Radical feminism, radical environmentalists”radical race mongers.
Annie C.,
I am over it.
But you're on notice.
LOL
Emptying your mind is not a good thing for you. Your mind needs training and it needs protection of its great power. Only crazed people fall for the seduction to empty their minds and be self hypnotized playthings of others.
He is absolutely right that most "mindfulness" training is crap, based on crap research, but it's a good living for the trainers--who are often true believers.
Alas, the same can be said for "sensitivity training" and all the related trainings.
The interviewer has the dates mixed up for Transcendental Meditation, and the New Age. TM was the '70s, the New Age was the '90s.
1. Promoters promote. That's what promoters do. And much of what's promoted under the banner of "self-help" is bunk. This is news?
2. The Nation et al have been lecturing us since forever that corporations are not people, but now they claim "Corporations Want You to Shut Up and Meditate"? If a corporation is not a person (or in any way like one), how can it "want" anything?
Haha! Thanks Birk. Peace out.
Oh boy — interrogating the differentials — this guy isn’t a slave to SJW orthodoxy at all. (I bet he says “Latinx”, too.)
Brown man good!
White man bad!
Being mindfulness requires an empty head.
Teach the kids reading "skills" and how to think "critically" without giving them anything to read or anything to think about.
I teach high school History and government. I have been instructed to stop teaching content and teach skills instead. When I ask how the kids can think critically about things they have no knowledge of, I am told that the kids have access to all of history on their phones. Apparently history is now whatever the first Google link says it is.
I, for one, found my spirit guide at the early stages of the self actualization movement.
My spirit guide? Bigwig, from Watership Down.
General Woundwort : Why throw your life away?
Bigwig : Hraka [rabbit for "excrement"]
Bigwig : ... sir!
General Woundwort : Come out!
Bigwig : My Chief's told me to defend this run.
General Woundwort : [Stunned] YOUR Chief?
And of course, Jonathon Livingston Seagull embodied mindfulness over 50 years ago.
I cannot find a citation Ann, but Russell Kirk used to quote of Daniel Boorstin something like this:
"Every American religious revival results in a new denomination or a new business."
Just lame Left-wing pushback. Doesn't fit the party line, so they're suspicious. If they discover it helps the Left gain power, they will start cheerleading for it.
"These differentials in power trouble me, and I think we need to interrogate these differentials.."
LOL!
My firm had a mindfulness program recently. My impression is that it was motivated by bringing down healthcare costs. Almost exclusively women participated.
This is so true. Physician burnout is a big topic in professional medical societies these days and their answer is to bring in mindfulness experts for lectures at their annual meetings. Whenever I sit through one of these presentations I feel like I'm a slave being told if I just count my blessings every day I will learn to love slavery. No amount of mindfulness or practicing "gratitude" is going to make me love doing prior authorizations, reviewing multi-page computer generated garbage notes from consultants, doing refill authorizations and clicking multiple pop-up windows to document my patient visits. Mindfulness alone does not get you out of hell.
"Almost exclusively women participated."
Visualize a glass ceiling and realize that you love the view.
Corporations are not the only entities promoting mindfulness...unless you count our public education system as a huge, monopolistic corporation.
<a href="https://www.mindfulschools.org/training/mindful-educator-essentials/>Mindful Schools</a>
Reposting the link:
Mindful Schools
Visualize a glass ceiling and realize that you love the view.
This self-pity from a woman as rich and successful as you are, Althouse, is truly silly.
And accusing others of bigotry over nothing.
You just can't keep yourself from doing it. What a terrible, juvenile, silly habit.
Do yourself a favor and stop this nonsense.
I'm trying to like you. It's like trying to continue to like somebody who can't stop picking her nose while you speak with her.
This little sensor and app, which I used for a while, seemed helpful. Was the only time I've ever tried meditating where I actually lost time--where the alarm went off and I realize I had no sense that 20 minutes or more had elapsed. It's need to have the sensor, through your phone, provide biofeedback on your current state. I keep telling myself that I should resume using it, because I did feel increased peace of mind and anxiety relief when I was, and maybe I will. It's hard for me to maintain the discipline, though, when I'm already pretty chilled out, which is a shame because meditation and breathing techniques are most helpful when you're in regular practice.
Sounds religious to me. Maybe a replacement for the more mainstream varieties. Filling some vague hole in people's souls.
Sophomore year in high school (1972) my english teacher - very much a hippy, probably in her late 30's - introduced me to Kurt Vonnegut's writing. Player Piano was first, then Welcome to The Monkey House. I happened upon Slaughterhouse-Five (A Duty Dance with Death) on my own. I've had a So It Goes sort of ethos ever since. The universe, god, whatever, doesn't give a shit about you and me, heck probably don't even know we're here. So it's up to us to make of our lives what we will, and own it.
I’ve done a Search Inside Yourself seminar and read both Chade-Meng Tan books. I did not realize he resigned due to stuff in his past, sounds like a me-too hit job.
I’ve also gone to a couple of one or two day meditation seminars by Buddhist monks.
The book from the snippet is a bit of a hit job.
Mindfulness / meditation is a tool and it’s like a knife. It can do good, and bad. I find it a good tool for dealing with stress and anxiety. Navel gazing is a danger.
I used to work for the big eastern syndicate that runs Christmas. The one Lucy had to go and blab about...
@ Shouting Thomas - I read the “glass ceiling” comment as a witticism. I don’t know what image came to your mind, but I imagined looking up women’s skirts and dresses. The schoolboy is not entirely ground out of me yet.
@Oso
That's a possibility!
I'm so old I forgot about such things!
The levels of anxiety and depression go down.
Some areas of the brain are activated , specifically those associated with feelings of empathy, compassion and altruistic love.
The volume of the tonsil, the region of the brain involved in the fear process, is reduced
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा