Critique of modern instrumental mindfulness as neoliberal narcissism

Mindfulness is exploding in the western mainstream. Its growth is exemplified by, among many things, the number of books with 'mindfulness' in the title, as well as the proliferation of trademarked mindfulness products. Mindfulness is also being introduced into diverse fields, including health care, education, business, sports, and the military, as well as finding its way into public arenas such as in-flight entertainment systems and hotel rooms. As mindfulness is increasingly applied in wide-ranging contexts, it has been redefined and ascribed new values, departing from Buddhist mindfulness from which it originates. Mindfulness has been appropriated, instrumentalized, commodified, and watered-down in the service of neoliberal corporate capitalist aims. The commodification of mindfulness decontextualizes and separates it from its religious, historical, and cultural context, while reorienting it toward consumer capitalism. What results is a nebulous hodgepodge of Eastern spirituality, both real and imagined—a cacophony of tokenized Buddhist, Vedic, and yogic elements. This process merges Eastern spiritual traditions with equal parts exotic mysticism and neuroscience, turning mindfulness into a cultural commodity fueled by pop-psychology and the self-help industry. I refer to these commodified forms of mindfulness as Modern Instrumental Mindfulness or MIM—synonymous to the more pejorative McMindfulness. The purpose of this inquiry is to describe the damaging effects of neoliberal corporate capitalism on education, and how MIM in schools unwittingly props up problematic dominant hegemonic norms. I critique neoliberal corporate capitalism vis-à-vis a critique of commercialized, commodified, and instrumentalized forms of mindfulness and its encroachment into education and illustrate how the two are causally connected. The rise in the application of MIM in education is influenced by the corporatization of education and thus, I will illustrate this relationship and problematize it.