The rise of “McMindfulness:” how can we make mindfulness meaningful again?
Mindfulness has been shown to have numerous benefits, including reduced stress and anxiety, improved sleep quality, and increased focus and concentration. Because of these benefits, mindfulness has become increasingly popular in recent years, with more and more people incorporating mindfulness into their lives. However, mindfulness and inner work that doesn’t seek to address problems in the outer world leads to “blissed out” form of self-absorption that obscures larger social problems. It manifest as spiritual bypassing, and ignorance disguised as enlightenment (think: people who say they “don’t see colour.”) In other words, when we focus on our own personal regulation and moment-by-moment attention, we may lose sight of the bigger picture.
In a series of articles, author Ron Purser argues that “McMindfulness” (the version of mindfulness we see today as something to be consumed) may be effective in managing stress, but ignores the systems that cause these problems in the first place. Regulating emotions and developing self-compassion may us be calmer, less stressed, and as a result to be better at our work as changemakers. But this is where “McMindfulness” falls short. It does not challenge the status quo or encourage people to question the systems that have led to stressful lives in the first place. As a result, it may actually perpetuate the very conditions it claims to be alleviating.
Proponents of “McMindfulness” purport that it is mindless and maladapted individuals who are to blame for the problems of a dysfunctional society, not the political and economic frameworks within which they are forced to act. They think that by shifting the burden of responsibility to individuals for managing their own wellbeing, and by privatising and pathologising stress, a 1.1 billion dollar mindfulness industry has emerged.
This industry teaches people how to cope with the negative effects of neoliberalism by using mindfulness techniques. It also provides them with products, such as meditation apps and books, that help them to achieve this goal. This does nothing to address the root causes of stress and instead tells people to accept their suffering as inevitable. The mindfulness industry is simply another way for capitalism to profit off of people’s misery.
The claim that our society is suffering from attention disorder is a farce. The real problem lies with the systems in place, not with individuals. To say that the solution is to focus on our own thoughts is a gross oversimplification of the matter. It implies that we are powerless against the structures that perpetuate inequality and suffering. McMindfulness is effectively telling us to accept things as they are and just try to think positive thoughts. This is ridiculous and offensive. We need systemic change, not individual mindfulness.
If the only focus of mindfulness training is on individual stress management, then it is missing the point. The real issue is not that individual employees are stressed, but that the organisations they work for are stressful places to be. Mindfulness that does not address this underlying issue are simply treating the symptoms, not the cause. “McMindfulness” is just putting a band-aid on a problem that keeps getting worse.
There are two key areas that must be addressed if we really want to harness mindfulness in our social movements:
(1) How we can make our teachings more accessible and inclusive for people from diverse backgrounds? One way to do this is to create opportunities for dialogue and exchange between different communities. We can also work to increase representation within our network, by making a conscious effort to recruit members from diverse groups. By increasing access and inclusion, we can help to ensure that mindfulness meditation is not only available to everyone.
(2) How can we ensure mindfulness is done for the purpose of benefiting the collective, not just ourselves? The skills mindfulness can add to our change-making toolkits is not only valuable in our personal lives but are also critical for social cohesion and effective functioning in the public sphere, and mindfulness practitioners and leaders of change must come together to explore the best ways we can raise our collective consciousness capabilities.
Although there is undoubtedly scope to make mindfulness training more transformative, high-quality mindfulness training programmes can already have a strong net-positive for society, provided they are accessible to those who need it most. It’s not hard to make the case that if you value wellbeing, compassion and the quality of relationships as ends in and of themselves. But beyond these intrinsic arguments we can also build a compelling case that mindfulness has important positive spillover effects on wider society. It can provide us with an invaluable toolkit for living with greater wisdom, compassion and clarity. And in a world that so desperately needs these things, that surely cannot be a bad thing.
