Mindfulness as propaganda and narcotic by Thomas Meyer, 10/14/2024

Mindfulness as propaganda and narcotic

by Thomas Meyer

[This article posted on 10/14/2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, http://www.exit-online.org.]

First published on oekumenisches-netz.de

1. Submission as freedom: On happiness in the “best of all worlds” (Candide/Voltaire)

In the neoliberal regime, people are forced to see themselves as entrepreneurs of their labor in order to always be able to meet the imperatives of the market, with the goal of “self-determinedly” submitting to the capitalist exploitation process and its constraints. In Western democracies, such self-enslavement is understood as freedom. Democracy here, of course, means nothing other than that everyone is formally subject to the same freedom from coercion. Neoliberalism represented only the final stage in the “cage of bondage” (Max Weber) that capitalism has always been (cf. Kurz 1999). In the “commodity-producing patriarchy” (Roswitha Scholz), personal freedom is as free as the confines of a corset. One must fit in perfectly whenever the market demands it, while having the freedom to restrict one’s own breathing space. Everyone has the freedom to strive for their own happiness, which implies nothing other than that failure, setbacks, and defeat are also one’s own responsibility. Success and failure, suffering and stress are privatized. Through subjectification in neoliberalism, the individual is thrown back on themselves. Social structures are ignored, collective thinking and action are denied or suppressed. Joint struggle and collective solidarity seem impossible. Being flexible and remaining resilient is the compulsory freedom of each individual (cf. Graefe 2019). Health consequences become private fault. People are said to have eaten the wrong foods and exercised too little. According to neoliberal propaganda, individuals alone are responsible for this, and not work-related stress and the restriction of ‘freedom of choice’ due to low income (cf. Mayr 2021). Illnesses become a purely medical problem. So-called lifestyle diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, have a lot to do with the fact that many people are or have to be permanently ‘at 180’, which physiologically results in higher blood pressure. The long-term consequences of high blood pressure are damage to the blood vessels, which contributes significantly to cardiovascular disease (cf. Cechura 2018). Consequently, mental illnesses are also becoming a privatized affliction, their causes supposedly located in one’s own brain and not in one’s living conditions, so that, according to vulgar neuroscientific materialism, the cure is to be found in the consumption of psychotropic drugs (cf. Schleim 2021 & Hasler 2023).

Now, this ‘musical chairs’ game, to which everyone is more or less exposed in the capitalist regime and which is sold as freedom by the ruling propaganda, does not necessarily end in a psychiatric clinic or the morgue. However, universal competition means that more and more people are being ground down by it, with psycho-social and health consequences. The subjects damaged by capitalism, especially those in loneliness and isolation, nevertheless try to process what is happening to them ‘somehow’. There is a wealth of self-help literature and paid courses designed to help individuals cope with themselves and the world: You just have to believe in yourself, think positively, be optimistic, change your diet, accept economic or personal crises as opportunities, discover unrecognized potential in and around yourself, etc. It is a mixture of adaptation to the market, denial of reality, and self-abuse. Those who are ‘realistic’ romanticize reality and submit to it. Esotericism also fits into this context of self-optimization of the individual. Esotericism promises many people meaning and orientation in their lives, seemingly offering a holistic perspective in contrast to the ‘cold rationality’ of objective science (or medicine). However, it also serves to place life crises in a social context and possibly to defend oneself collectively against unreasonable demands (e.g., through strikes and sabotage), a way to continually reinvent oneself as a neoliberal subject or simply to endure stress by retreating into privacy and introspection, through passivity and drivel, through ‘holism’ and health (cf. Barth 2012). Esotericism often appears to be harmless self-mockery, but it has been and continues to be linked to reactionary and fascist thinking (cf. Kratz 1994, Speit 2021). Of course, esotericism here has nothing to do with its original meaning from antiquity, as secret or difficult-to-access knowledge that not everyone can or should have access to, but is instead a billion-dollar business. For this, elements or aspects of various religious or philosophical traditions are naturally exploited and instrumentalized for neoliberal propaganda and self-indoctrination.

2. Meditation as the “opium of the people” (Marx)A few years ago, Zen Buddhist and management professor Ronald Purser criticized the neoliberal instrumentalization and exploitation of Buddhist meditation practices in his book McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Spirituality of Capitalism1 (Purser 2021). In Western countries, so-called mindfulness has become a widespread hype. Mindfulness, which can be achieved through a specific form of meditation practice, is primarily intended to reduce stress and strengthen concentration. This meditation practice is called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). A key agitator and preacher is Jon Kabat-Zinn, whom Purser refers to repeatedly in his book. It is said that one should dwell in the here and now, not cling, not judge, neither negative nor positive feelings, always breathe in and out, mindfully eat a raisin, and so on. Corresponding courses are used and offered almost everywhere: in schools, at universities, for stressed managers, for stressed employees, for entrepreneurs, at all kinds of conferences, in Davos, and even in the military (so that soldiers take a deep breath before shooting wildly). Mindfulness preachers claim that if mindfulness were practiced by many, it could change the world and everything would be fine. Everything therefore depends on the individual. Nothing else needs to be done (such as political, trade union, or, above all, socially critical engagement). Just be mindful in the present moment. Do Kabat-Zinn & Co really believe their own propaganda? Either way, this idea is based on a bottomless ignorance that has no clue about how the world really works, how other people really live, what the problems of poor people, Black people, women, etc. are. The apostles of mindfulness “falsely assume a uniformity of human experience” (ibid., 211) and apparently do not even notice the social filter bubble from which they argue. On the one hand, the preachers of mindfulness emphasize that the meditation practice they offer has nothing to do with Buddhism, but is secular (and therefore legal in public schools in the US), and that its positive effects have allegedly been proven by (neuro)science (however, as Purser points out, the evidence is rather thin, statistically insignificant, indistinguishable from placebo, or simply non-existent). On the other hand, the same people emphasize, depending on the occasion and situation—which further underscores the instrumental and intellectually dishonest nature of the whole thing—that MBSR is supposedly the essence of Dharma, i.e., fundamentally and essentially related to Buddhism, and that everything else that makes Buddhism Buddhism is more or less superfluous or nonsense. Here, a certain Western white arrogance breaks through. Buddhism is being devalued, and there is no serious engagement with it, which would apparently be detrimental to the marketing of meditation in the neoliberal regimes of the West anyway. It is no coincidence that the title of the book is McMindfulness.

According to Purser, none of this really has anything to do with Buddhism. One cannot really say that a Western school of Buddhism is emerging here (as, for example, Chan Buddhism emerged as an independent Chinese form of Buddhism). On the contrary, mindfulness programs are a product of neoliberal American society; they therefore exist in a specific context that is not usually made apparent. Mindfulness, on the other hand, as Purser makes clear, is only one aspect of Buddhist practice that cannot be isolated and certainly cannot be regarded as a panacea. Purser therefore has no objection in principle to mindfulness and the meditation practices that cultivate it. As he always emphasizes, what is crucial here is the social context and the purpose to be achieved. Meditation is being instrumentalized because it is stripped of its context, because the ethical foundations on which it is based and the goal it strives for are excluded (which is what makes its use in the military possible in the first place).2 Mindfulness is not solely, and certainly not primarily, about reducing stress and passively breathing in the present moment; Meditation is rather part of ethical cultivation (sila), and right mindfulness as part of the Eightfold Path has as its goal compassion, a broadening of perspective, and not a narrowing and fixation on oneself. It is not the individual as an individual who becomes mindful and ‘compassionate’, but as part of a community (sangha). Mindfulness stripped of its ethical context and reduced to stress management alone ties in perfectly with the neoliberal ideology as indicated above. Buddhism reduced to fast-food consumption for stress management in the neoliberal regime is, as Adorno would probably note with horror, not even “half-education.” So instead of looking for the causes of stress, such as working conditions that could be fought against collectively, stress is individualized and turned into a private problem. The reduction of stress serves to be or remain a productive worker and simply to cope better with stress, to simply endure it and to fit in in a good mood and relaxed. The aim is to keep the capitalist machinery running smoothly. Here, Lenin is definitely right when he writes that “religion […] is a kind of spiritual rot in which the slaves of capital drown their human face and their claims to a reasonably humane life” (Lenin 1956, 7). The rotgut with which reality is drowned here consists of sucking on a raisin for minutes on end and convincing oneself (or being convinced) that by paying attention to the present moment, one’s own life can somehow be improved or some problems solved. The goal of “mindfulness-based stress reduction” is not to criticize stress and its causes, but to adapt to working conditions and circumstances. Of course, this has nothing to do with socially engaged Buddhism (such as that of Thich Nhat Hanh, for example). And it certainly has nothing to do with criticism of capitalism. Mindfulness agitators such as Kabat-Zinn are, so to speak, among the priests of neoliberalism.

3. Criticism & solidarity instead of self-narcotizationJust as one can find content in the Judeo-Christian tradition that leads to critical opposition to capitalism and its ideology, enabling the sparking of collective solidarity against the impositions and presumptions of capitalism (cf. Böttcher 2023 & 2022, Ramminger; Segbers 2018 & King 2018), a properly understood Buddhism can also contribute to the practical and theoretical critique of capitalism. If mindfulness as a moment of Buddhist practice is not instrumentalized and vulgarized for neoliberal propaganda and as a wellness narcotic for resilience and reality suppression, so that “oppressive systems function even more smoothly” (Purser 2021, 202), so that it is not reduced to making individuals more resilient and compliant, right mindfulness can broaden our perspective and help us to be steadfast and clear in mind and heart together. In the words of Ronald Purser: “Since liberation is a systemic process, it cannot rely on individual methods. Social mindfulness begins with the broadest possible perspective and directs collective attention to the structural causes of suffering. Groups work together to create shared meanings and a common ground and to develop a socially oriented motivation before turning inward. This is, of course, different from an eight-week course in a boardroom. It goes much deeper and pursues longer-term goals by combining resistance with meditative practice. The goal is not to reduce stress in order to return to business as usual. Rather, it is about overcoming alienation by working together with others in a common struggle for social justice, utilizing inner resources, and resisting unjust power in order to liberate both the oppressors and the oppressed” (ibid., 215f.).

However, a critique of neoliberalism will hardly suffice to understand capitalism as a “concrete totality” (Scholz 2009) with its fetishistic movement of exploitation G-W-G’ and the gender-specific bourgeois subject form, as well as the manifold manifestations of crisis (cf. e.g. Jappe 2003, Kurz 1999 & Scholz 1992). Nevertheless, Purse’s contribution to a critique of neoliberal ideology in the form of ‘mindfulness’ is not insignificant, as the size of the esoteric and self-optimization scene alone shows. Esoteric self-management is also known to be part of the ‘pastoral care services’ offered by Christian churches (cf. Böttcher 2022, 73ff.). Of course, the church does not want to forego its share of the market, which is why it panders to the prevailing zeitgeist. Without collective solidarity, which frees individuals from their lethargy and isolation and their futile attempts to cope through all kinds of psychological techniques and medications, any attempt to defend oneself against antisocial impositions and the terror of the economy is likely to be doomed to failure. Religious or pseudo-religious practices that confirm the individual in his isolation and do not even dream of seeing the ‘whole’ are not an alternative to the ‘cold rationality’ of capitalism, but its realization.

For reasons of space, page references and quotations have been largely omitted in the following.
The same applies to the neoliberal appropriation of ancient philosophy, such as Stoicism or Plato.