A lot has been written recently about how mindfulness can serve the social reproduction of capitalism. CEO’s list meditation as a daily practice that helps them stay mentally agile in their pursuit of profit maximisation. Commentators like Slavok Zizek, tell us that, “by allowing us to uncouple and retain some inner peace,” such practices actually function “as the perfect ideological supplement [to capitalism].”
In his recent article for Transformation, The Future of Mindfulness, Ron Purser reiterates the fact that “mindfulness can be used for nefarious purposes when divorced from a larger ethical framework.” If used purely as a method to relieve individualized stress or enhance personal performance, it can compound individualistic self-preoccupation, distract us from the structural causes of injustice, and deflect our efforts away from projects aimed at building collective agency for systemic change. Like most things, mindfulness is susceptible to co-option in a world where “capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizon of the thinkable,” as Mark Fisher once put it.
And yet, that’s not the whole story. Purser finishes his article by saying that “we need a new language and praxis of spiritual and political liberation that isn’t muted by the weak balm of self-improvement.” Many of us who are integrating mindfulness into activist training couldn’t agree more, but for us this isn’t the future of mindfulness, because the language and praxis we need are already here. In our work at the Ulex Project with people committed to struggles of solidarity, mindfulness has proven itself a powerful resource for radical transformation and a vital tool for dismantling oppressive structures, both within and around us.
