
How corporates co-opted mindfulness to make us bear the unbearable (2015) - nowherecat
https://theconversation.com/how-corporates-co-opted-the-art-of-mindfulness-to-make-us-bear-the-unbearable-47768
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voidhorse
If it can be sold and used as a tool for subjugation humans will quickly
determine and optimize the ways in which to do so.

That's the beauty of capitalism--or possibly even economics in general--it
acknowledges and respects nothing that falls outside of its own scope. No
matter how ancient, sophisticated, sacred, or meaningful a practice may have
been--no matter what reverence our ancestral betters may have applied to it,
capitalism will find the most effective way to utilize it as a strictly
economic material and convert it into profit. For the true capitalist there is
no extra or supra-capitalism. Capitalism envelops the world. It swallows and
defuses all meaning and translates it into the small subset of meanings it
understands. All is reduced to pure economic terms--it is no longer a question
of interfacing with the practices of your ancestors, respecting history or
engaging in spiritual practice--the meditation is only understood and useful
insofar as it has an assignable quantity related to productive increase or
related directly to profit.

I can at least take some comfort in the fact that articles like this still
crop up and call the beast into question.

~~~
davemp
So corporations find that mentally healthy employees are more
productive/valuable so they promote mental fortitude. Somehow anti-capitalists
spin even that into some deep evil. Ridiculous.

~~~
49531
The point is that corporations encourage mental health only inasmuch as it
promotes their own ends.

~~~
yters
At least they're promoting mental health! If there is a natural law then what
is in the best interest of the worker is in the best interest of lawful
business. And since anything that goes against the natural law ultimately
destroys itself, as Aquinas explains, a lawful business is the only kind of
business you want.

~~~
bpchaps
Sorry, but that's total bullshit. The promotion of mental health stretches
only to those with mostly-good mental health. A true focus on mental health is
severely deprioritized in the workplace for legitimate mental health problems.
Which, go figure - only makes mental health issues even worse.

~~~
yters
Yes, perhaps this result can pave the way for a broader focus.

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maxxxxx
I used to teach meditation and yoga for a while. One of my teachers said that
meditation should make you less resilient to stress and make you realize that
need to change your life. So if someone credits their material success to
meditation it's best to view this as an abuse or misunderstanding of the
practice.

It took me a while to accept but now I agree with this viewpoint.

~~~
avtar
_One of my teachers said that meditation should make you less resilient to
stress and make you realize that need to change your life. So if someone
credits their material success to meditation it 's best to view this as an
abuse or misunderstanding of the practice._

That doesn't sound accurate. Are you suggesting that one would be less
resilient to stresses linked to livelihood or stress in general?

Over time meditation and yoga practices should help develop equanimity
extensively, a factor that helps deal with stressful situations with more
grace and emotional balance.

~~~
Boothroid
One thing I've never quite understood - if you are teaching yourself to become
more equanimous how do you avoid becoming less concerned about the things that
really matter also?!

~~~
maxxxxx
Equanimity doesn't have to be numbness. You can be very passionate about
something and still being calm.

~~~
hinkley
I had a boss who didn't understand the difference between panic and urgency.
Every 'pep talk' he tried to give us turned into a short day and drinks after
work because we were so depressed or freaked out.

If your friend falls in the water or is about to be hit by a bus, getting
excited about it doesn't help anybody. You have do something, and quickly, but
with purpose and reason.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think a lot of people think it's good to be super excited about everything.
You have to be outraged, really angry, deeply offended and whatever.
Everything has to be amplified to the extreme.

~~~
Boothroid
I agree. I should move to Finland, I gather they are more sanguine.

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Boothroid
'The current translations of ancient mindful practices are also highly
gendered. In a culture where women are much more likely to be encouraged to
apply acceptance, silence, stillness and the relinquishing of resistance to
their problems, the trap of mindfulness can be set to stun for those who may
be much more in need of speaking up, resisting and taking space in the
workplace.'

This seems completely back to front to me. Surely it's men that have greater
societal expectations of stoicism, toughness etc. than women, and fewer
options for social support. I'm sure we all know about higher rates of suicide
in men. These are often linked to the types of pressures I mention.

Apart from that I generally agree that this trend is pretty insidious. One of
their latest wheezes is 'resilience', which from my reading boiled down to
'hey there x, what's your major malfunction that you can't cope with the soul
destroying drudgery and corporate psychopathy like y? Perhaps you should read
our piece about resilience to learn how to become a good drone again. We
wouldn't want to have to lose you would we?'.

~~~
ndrr
I'd like to hear more about it, but maybe there is too much content behind it
for the editorial. Are women more likely to accept a bad work environment? Are
women more likely to be encouraged to keep quiet? Is being encouraged to keep
quiet more likely to be effective on women than men?

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nxsynonym
> "If we truly become mindful of our existence then our recurrent anxieties
> become not just a wave we watch pass through our minds, not something to be
> mastered in order to be a better servant, but a call to take action in order
> to be more fully alive."

Agreed. The whole point behind meditation and mindfulness is to create a more
well rounded spiritual life/existence. Not to ignore the things that cause you
distress or pain, but to identify them clearly and untangle issues to figure
out how to get past them.

My current company offers a whole slew of "wellness programs" \- yoga,
meditation, running clubs, etc. Great in theory, but they all take place
during "lunch break", are limited to 20 mins or so, and charge (albeit, a
small fee). None of these, I believe, are to benefit the lives of the
employees but to create a sense of "forward thinking" in the company to
encourage productivity.

Want my stress and anxieties to disappear at work and get me to be more
productive? Pay more and ask for less working hours.

~~~
maxxxxx
Yep. That why I wouldn't teach meditation in a corporate setting. It's just
window dressing without any real intent of making people's lives better.

~~~
lazerpants
As the teacher, couldn't you have taught it in a way to make people's lives
better?

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PaulHoule
Yep, just how antidepressant manufactures co-opted research on social
dominance to reverse some of the biochemical changes that happen when you are
"ground down like a minion".

~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
Do you have a source for that? Or something I can read further?

~~~
pc86
Of course not

~~~
PaulHoule
Of course:

[https://innermammalinstitute.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/...](https://innermammalinstitute.org/wp-
content/uploads/2016/10/Serotonin-and-Social-Dominance-Citations.pdf)

[http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunc...](http://www.ulm.edu/~palmer/TheBiochemistryofStatusandtheFunctionofMoodStates.htm)

I thought everybody knew this.

~~~
lazerpants
Most people think depression is caused by, "an imbalance of neurotransmitters
in the brain", and don't know much else about it.

Thanks for the papers, they're interesting and I hadn't seen all of that
research, despite being somewhat familiar with the field.

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hosh
While there is truth to that, mindfulness provides the basis for authentic
expression of the natural self. And often times, that will mean GTFO of an
abusive situation.

How you know whether it really is authentic and not simply a story is that it
arises naturally, spontaneously, and effortless. It will have a "deep" marker
to it. There is an active test you can apply: try to poke at the action. If it
resists, comes up with any excuses, rationalizations, or justifications in
order to stay attached to it, then it is still a story, albeit, coming from a
very deep place inside of it.

If in poking it, it stays silent and it feels like it is expressed
_unsupported_ by any narrative, then that is coming from your authentic self.
In other words, it doesn't need your approval or disapproval, or anyone
else's, including social norms and corporate policy.[1]

Note: the Buddhist notions don't have a notion of "true self" (or rather, it
moves from "no self" -> "true self" -> "no self"). I'm drawing from classical,
transcendental non-dual Shaiva Tantra[2] (which inspired and cross-polinated
with tantric Buddhist), and it goes with "true self" -> "no self" -> "true
self".

The point of mindfulness is _your_ freedom and _your_ state of mind. It's fine
if you are inspired to practice it because corporations made space for it (or
more cynically, make you do it in order to tolerate bad situations). Your mind
is your own, whether you want to be happy or miserable. There _are_ people who
will mindfully tolerate bad working conditions as expressed from their
authentic self ... and there are many others who won't. You won't know until
you have cleared enough of your own obscurations to find out.

[1] The followup is: in tantra, someone's natural, authentic self may be an
asshole. If you don't like what your natural, authentic self is, tantra
provides the tools for transformation into a different natural, authentic
self. However, it is not as simple as changing the narrative, since a change
in narrative is merely a change in narrative and not a change in your natural,
authentic self.

[2] Christopher Wallis. Tantra Illuminated

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nickstefan12
Interesting take. I could paraphrase this as a response to this sort of
strawman, "It sucks that we have to pay [for xyz necessity], wait [in traffic
for abc experience], and accept [toxic influencers on your life], but thats
just part of the human experience".

I think its an acceptable strawman, as often we do need to remind ourselves
that, "No one but me is actually forcing me to [live here / work here / see
these people ]".

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squozzer
I would say that most institutions that exist for moral edification --
religions, Boy Scouts, civic clubs -- do essentially the same thing which is
align the attitudes of the weaker to the benefit of the stronger.

~~~
linksnapzz
Much the same way that popular media has sold socially-acceptable prepackaged
rebellion for the mollification of disgruntled adolescents (and adolescents-
at-heart) for decades...

~~~
24gttghh
>socially-acceptable prepackaged rebellion

I am having a hard time coming up with an example of this.

~~~
twoquestions
Wild hair, Hot Topic, believing in politics contrary to the area you're in.

It's rebellion, but acceptable compared to bombing state offices or somesuch.

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ninju
This article is from 2015...shouldn't the HN entry be preceded with a (2015)
(what are the rules/guidelines on that ?)

