Mindfulness as the Spiritual Heroin of Capitalism

Heroin was known for its numbing anaesthetic qualities even by the Chinese back in 1839 when they realised that the Chinese population was becoming more and more docile under the influence of British- imported opium.

Capitalism is failing to provide an egalitarian society and that means real suffering for millions of human beings. Inequality is on the rise as in 2017 we reached the point where 1% of the worlds population control 50% of the wealth.

Unless you belong to that 1%, the chances are that you spend your working day in a precarious job that has the end result of making someone else rich. You may have a full-time contract, but in Spain you can be sacked pretty much anytime. You will find that if you are ill, you can no longer go to the Doctor to get your free Public Health treatment, because your boss is no longer obliged to pay for your time at the doctors. You can either take a days holiday or you can lose a days pay.

You may find yourself working in a call centre to make ends meet and your daily activity is bullying and badgering people into pension plans, telephone contracts….just fill in the dots yourself. There will at all times be someone behind you bullying and badgering you into bullying and badgering more effectively and helping you hit those bullying and badgering targets.

If you are a woman, you’re more likely to be in a precarious low paid job, where you will be expected to clean 21 hotel rooms in a day and you’re only allowed 15 minutes to clean each room. You’ll be between 51 and 56 years old and your body will be held together by elastic bandages that help you get through the day without too much pain.

We are running scared, looking back over our shoulder to see who’s coming up behind us to take what little we have away from us.

Instead of rising up and protesting, we're meditating and becoming mindful

Capitalism’s answer to this has been a masterstroke in deception and manipulation. Relying on ancient eastern philosophies companies all over the world are helping their employees find relief through mindfulness and meditation.

When your back is breaking, or you’re being forced to break your own moral code, when you're underpaid and living in fear. Mindfulness is there to remind you that any toxic emotions you may demonstrate in the workplace are disruptive to workplace harmony, mindfulness will help you just observe your situation in a non-judgemental manner and will allow you to disattach to what is going on around you.

The passivity and individualistic nature of mindfulness makes it a perfect bedfellow for an ever more savage type of capitalism.

Mindfulness is the new opium for the masses