What is something like a hobby or skill that you belive almost anybody should give a try, and what makes your suggestion so good compared to other things?
i feel like this is a descent question i guess.
What is something like a hobby or skill that you belive almost anybody should give a try, and what makes your suggestion so good compared to other things?
i feel like this is a descent question i guess.
I’m not saying mindfulness can’t have serious benefits. However, I would caution anyone who’s into it to read the book McMindfulness. A lot of the “science” behind it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, there can be genuine drawbacks to it, and it’s often used in unethical ways–like to make CEOs of ruthless companies more able to shove aside their feelings of guilt, or to sharpen the minds of soldiers for killing.
Wait, there’s people making money off of this shit‽ Like, my therapist and I work on mindfulness, but for me that just means being present in my body (not escaping into books/games/videos), considering my wants and needs, and listening to my emotions (even when they’re unpleasant). Is there some other definition? I like talking to people about it, but I’ll have to be more specific about what I mean in the future if there’s someone out there selling something.
I mean, look up “mindfulness” on Amazon. There are a million books for sale out there. And people like John Kabat-Zinn have made plenty of money selling mindfulness to everyone from mental health clinics to the military.
Mindfulness in this context is generally just defined as paying attention to the present moment. But that’s ethically neutral and can be used to, for example, make the horrors of late-stage capitalism more bearable for its subjects, or to help soldiers focus on the act of killing rather than the horror of it.