McMindfulness - Moé for Solarpunk Books

Paperback, 304 pages

Published July 9, 2019 by Repeater.

ISBN:: 978-1-912248-31-5

(1 review)

Mindfulness is now all the rage.

From celebrity endorsements to monks, neuroscientists and meditation coaches rubbing shoulders with CEOs at the World Economic Forum in Davos, it is clear that mindfulness has gone mainstream. Some have even called it a revolution. But what if, instead of changing the world, mindfulness has become a banal form of capitalist spirituality that mindlessly avoids social and political transformation, reinforcing the neoliberal status quo?

In McMindfulness, Ronald Purser debunks the so-called “mindfulness revolution,” exposing how corporations, schools, governments and the military have coopted it as technique for social control and self-pacification.

A lively and razor-sharp critique, Purser busts the myths its salesmen rely on, challenging the narrative that stress is self-imposed and mindfulness is the cure-all. If we are to harness the truly revolutionary potential of mindfulness, we have to cast off its neoliberal shackles, liberating mindfulness for a collective awakening.

1 edition

pdotb@wyrms.de reviewed McMindfulness by Ronald Purser

It's a bit ranty and repetitive, but I still appreciated it

4 stars

Purser appears to have multiple criticisms of the craze for secular mindfulness, among them that it's stripped of any ethical framework, that its claims of scientific backing seem pretty weak (TBH, I'm taking his word for that -- he does provide references, but I haven't followed them up yet), that it claims to be inspired by Buddhism when it's useful to do so, but then ditches it when it's useful to be purely secular and, perhaps most pointed, that it's ideally suited to corporate wellness programs as it mitigates the stress of the workplace without challenging anything about why work is the way it is. Can feel a bit overly ranty, and maybe too personally directed at Jon Kabat-Zinn in particular. Also leans towards being repetitive, though the latter part of the book does break this down quite well by having separate chapters about mindfulness in schools, for example, or …

Purser appears to have multiple criticisms of the craze for secular mindfulness, among them that it's stripped of any ethical framework, that its claims of scientific backing seem pretty weak (TBH, I'm taking his word for that -- he does provide references, but I haven't followed them up yet), that it claims to be inspired by Buddhism when it's useful to do so, but then ditches it when it's useful to be purely secular and, perhaps most pointed, that it's ideally suited to corporate wellness programs as it mitigates the stress of the workplace without challenging anything about why work is the way it is. Can feel a bit overly ranty, and maybe too personally directed at Jon Kabat-Zinn in particular. Also leans towards being repetitive, though the latter part of the book does break this down quite well by having separate chapters about mindfulness in schools, for example, or in the military. Purser does admit that Buddhism can also fail here, such as the support of the Zen establishment for Japanese militarism in the early twentieth century. He does appear to allow that it makes sense that individuals use mindfulness to ameliorate their own life conditions, and direct his anger at the corporate-friendly practitioners and teachers, but the book felt weakest in expounding alternatives.