McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
Social mindfulness is not an intervention conducted by experts. It makes no claim to sell “evidence-based” services. Its aims are regenerative, helping to repair solidarities and social bonds that neoliberalism devastates. It does not adopt the outlook of power, and refuses to collude with, or act on behalf of, institutional interests. Instead, it
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In this way, neoliberal mindfulness functions as a machine of disimagination. The self is inter-pellated to make (or make-over) a project out of its own identity, constantly monitoring its conduct, and refashioning it in ways that feed fantasies of unfettered agency, aspiring to be free from the constraints of social conditioning.
Ronald E. Purser • McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
One invests in mindfulness as one would invest in a stock hoping to receive a handsome dividend.
Ronald E. Purser • McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
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.
Ronald E. Purser • McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
I can’t but help think of this whole charade as a form of what Sean Feit calls “saffron-washing.”6 Just as “green- washing” masks environmentally harmful policies with token eco-friendly gestures, saffron-washing helps hip postmodern corporations to present a gentler, kinder, wiser public image.
Ronald E. Purser • McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
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
... See moreRonald E. Purser • McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
The noxious features of neoliberal capitalism were nowhere to be found on the mindfulness radar. Stress was a private, subjective and interior affair — a problem for individuals to deal with.
Ronald E. Purser • McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
The neoliberal self is always being encouraged to “go a little deeper” into the interior, to take better care of itself. As this self-management moves to the foreground, collective lives become less important. Mindfulness therefore squares nicely with political stories that keep us attached to competition.
Ronald E. Purser • McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
Like workplace wellness, happiness, resilience, and the positive psychology of flourishing, mindfulness sees the minds and bodies of employees as sources of economic value.