McMindfulness by Ronald Purser
via @kingthemcqueen
In McMindfulness, Ronald Purser explores how the industrialization of the wellness industry has created a type of wellness akin to the fast food industry—one devoid of any real nourishment.
Wellness is a commodity, a source of economic value, which means selling it contributes to our GDP. Technically, helping people truly attain wellness and beauty would hurt the economy (or, at least, those industries). But helping them chase it? That is good for business. This is why so much influencer content is aspirational. If it actually looked like your life, you wouldn’t have anything to buy into. Even if you know that there are studio lights, expensive cameras, multiple lenses, and Photoshop behind all of that content, you still feel inadequate.
Humans are perpetually depleted under capitalism and wellness businesses have become invaluable as the only way to survive in a system that works against our basic needs like rest and relaxation. We are sold promises of transcendence but ultimately they fail to deliver any real change because true consumer satisfaction would render most products, business models, and our entire current economic system obsolete.
Since the dawn of industrialization, nearly every industry has undergone industrialization, and now we are left with fast food, fast fashion, fast delivery, and fast technology. It was inevitable that wellness would eventually take this course, but we have forgotten the moral of these past lessons: fast wellness will not be better.
Instead of encouraging unbiased self-awareness, McMindfulness programs are designed to pathologize normal human experiences like wandering thoughts and powerful emotions. Instead of engaging these experiences in a healthy way to gain more knowledge about our underlying emotions, they teach tools that compartmentalize these experiences to prioritize productivity.
Biohacking is just another way to mine natural resources for material gain. It is a violent habit that depletes people. Burnout is no different from global warming. If our wellness is not for us, if we are forced to cultivate it for productivity — to perform and profit, then what is the point? Is the human completely reduced to a worker? Just another cog in the system? The direct embodiment of industrialization?
McMindfulness style teachers often preach the thought-terminating cliche that simply teaching everyone meditation would lead humanity to world peace. At the same time, they remove the ethics and philosophical thought from mindfulness teachings (to make them more palatable to Western tastes) and don’t consider how this will alter the results. They teach people just enough mindfulness to recognize the problem, and then convince the student that they are the problem to keep them committed to the practice. This is not helpful.
“The commoditization of 'McMindfulness' has sought to make meditation more efficient, calculable, predictable, and controlled. But this has led to the opposite outcome, creating an uncontrollable consumer commodity that devalues mindfulness. Downloading an app as a digital detox is irrational. Mindful merchants don’t care. They seem to be proud of creating a global branded product, accessible to anyone, anywhere — like a Big Mac.”
Robert Purser
Why you should read this
Trying to get rid of parts of yourself that you deem bad or unworthy is not healthy or effective — they will haunt you until you integrate and accept the experience.
If you feel disappointed that mindfulness hasn’t solved your problems, this book will remind you that meditation is just a tool. It’s not sentient or virtuous — neither good nor bad. It simply is. It just exists. It can be a tool for social discipline or social revolution. What will you do with it?
Anyone looking to slow down and assess their need for constant self improvement.