I was working for the climate change campaign 10:10 around the time that NGOs in the environmental field were abandoning the “information deficit hypothesis” - the idea that giving people enough facts about the worsening ecological crisis would elicit action. Reflecting on what had driven my own shift from a career in advertising to full-time dedication to this cause, I felt sure that the greater stillness and sensitivity I’d developed through mindfulness practice had been instrumental in allowing the data I’d heard many times before to ‘land’ very differently. Faced with the confusion that existed in the climate movement at the time, I left to focus on sharing trainable qualities of awareness like mindfulness, and investigating the ways in which they shape our behaviour, and therefore, our world.
Like many evangelists before me, however, I had a very naive theory of change. I confess, back in 2010 I thought that people simply needed to meditate for socially-conscious behaviour to follow. In his recent critique, Ron Purser admonishes the mindfulness teaching community for assuming that ethical behaviour naturally arises from personal practice, inhibiting the radical action required to address the systemic causes of distress. The qualities of mindful awareness - open, empathic and caring - are not ethically neutral, and there is some evidence that they influence consumption and sustainable and prosocial behaviour, but it’s far from certain that developing an internal climate of friendliness will lead to collective action or resistance.
It’s also true that the route mindfulness training has taken into mainstream culture - via clinical settings and academic studies that measure individual pathology much more easily than social good - has produced a tendency to frame distress and the benefits of mindfulness within a bio-medical paradigm. This likely limits the range of options that participants consider when using the greater sensitivity and discernment that come through practice to make changes in their lives. Mindfulness courses already explore the implications of practice in relational contexts, and as a result of these conversations they continue to evolve in ways that include wider questions about society and the environment. A recent Transformation article by the founders of the Mindfulness and Social Change Network details some of the ways in which this is already happening.
