The Mindfulness Myth, with Ronald Purser and Helen Lewis

Intelligence Squared

Arts, News, Society & Culture, News Commentary

4.2 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 September 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mindfulness – the psychological practice of bringing one's attention to the present moment through meditation – has gone mainstream. It has been enthusiastically co-opted by Silicon Valley and other large corporations as well as schools, governments and even the U.S. military. But what if, instead of changing the world, mindfulness has become a banal form of capitalist spirituality that mindlessly avoids social and political transformation, reinforcing the status quo? That's the view of Ronald Purser, Professor of Management at San Francisco State University, Buddhist practitioner and author of McMindfulness. In this episode of the Intelligence Squared podcast, he was interviewed by Helen Lewis of The Atlantic on his radical critique of the mindfulness industry. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:59.4	Hello and welcome to this week's Intelligence Squad podcast.
1:02.8	This week we speak to the mindfulness expert Ronald Perser.
1:06.4	He's a professor of management at San Francisco State University and he's written a book called
1:10.9	Mac Mindfulness, How Mindfulness Became a New Capitalist spirituality.
1:15.6	Daniel, what was the conversation about?
1:17.6	So as you say, Rona Pershir is an expert on mindfulness.
1:20.7	He's very critical of modern mindfulness, but I should say he's also a long-time
1:24.0	Buddhist practitioner as well as his job as a management professor at San Francisco State
1:28.5	University and his argument in his book Mc Mindfulness is that the modern practice of mindfulness is being
1:34.8	co-opted and corrupted by big companies to further their corporate goals at the expense of the
1:40.8	real message of spirituality and meditation. He was interviewed by Helen Lewis
1:45.0	who's a staff writer at the Atlantic and we hope you enjoy listening to the
1:48.0	episode. And if you do, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple
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