At Open Democracy, Ronald Purser particulars an emerging current of mindefulness advocates who search to make the observe extra collective and socially grounded. Purser notes that mindfullness has not too long ago been appropriated and corrupted by Silicon Valley CEOs and neoliberal gurus, who see it on nothing greater than a way to elevated productiveness. However this view, writes Purser, treats the psyche as particular person and atomized, when it’s in reality deeply social. Take a look at an excerpt from the piece under:
These examples illustrate how mindfulness can be utilized for nefarious functions when divorced from a bigger moral framework and deployed as a self-help approach that reinforces the atomization of people – relaying an implicit ideological message that the stresses and anxieties we expertise are because of our poor life-style decisions and psychological ruminations, versus the constructions and environments through which we dwell and work. How can this entice be averted?
Over the previous few months Transformation has revealed quite a few articles that assist to reply that query, kicked off by my critique of “The faux revolution of mindfulness.” Numerous frequent themes have emerged from this sequence. The primary is the necessity to see, educate and expertise mindfulness inside a broader social context if its potential as a power for change is to be realized. In “Moving mindfulness from ‘me’ to ‘we’” I name this a shift in the direction of ‘civic’ mindfulness that allows people to see extra clearly how their on a regular basis experiences and private troubles are entangled with public points.
Because the Jesuit priest and social activist Father Daniel Berrigan as soon as put it, this type of mindfulness seeks to “problem the tyranny implicit in issues as they’re,” by creating a brand new praxis which may construct stronger bonds of solidarity to beat the loneliness and isolation of people in modern societies. On this sense, mindfulness is in the end an act of re-membering, not solely when it comes to reminiscence, but in addition of placing our damaged lives again collectively once more collectively.
Picture by Hari Om Yoga Vidya College – personal work, CC BY-SA 4.0. By way of Wikimedia Commons.
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