Mindfulness and resonance in an era of acceleration: a critical inquiry

Abstract

The paper emerges from the trend toward a commodification of mindfulness practices, known as McMindfulness. Drawing on a critique of late-modern temporality, the paper examines the use of mindfulness practices as a remedy for the consequences of societal acceleration. However, the paper suggests that mindfulness practices risk reinforcing the problems they were expected to solve. Against the backdrop of the notion of resonance, the paper suggests a non-instrumental path for mindfulness practices, which have the potential to counterbalance the acceleration in social and working life and to provide the basis for the good life by assisting experiences of resonant relationships. However, the institutionalized capitalistic logic that permeates societal acceleration challenges legitimation of such mindfulness-based experiences of resonance. Therefore, the paper advocates more humanistic logic that embraces deeply rooted universal human capacities and needs for attention, awareness, relationality, and caring.

Keywords:

• Mindfulness
• McMindfulness
• acceleration
• resonance
• critical reflection

Notes

1. TINA stands for: there is no alternative. A slogan often used by the British Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.