Ah, ‘mindfulness’! The buzzword of the zeitgeist, especially after the whole covid thing. Apparently, such a broad ‘term’ that it encompasses any kind of “mental health issue`” you care to mention…which makes it simultaneously useful and useless. I suppose the closest we can get to a ‘definition’ is “living in the moment”, aware of only what is happening NOW. Which seems quite bizarre to me: to experience the present moment you are using the perceptions that you’ve formulated from past experiences. If you weren’t, then you would understand what ‘NOW’ meant.
This is, however, the “easy bit”. The primary question here is why the emphasis on mindfulness (it’s a multi-billion euro industry)? Why the stream of articles about different kinds of mindfulness? What that ever-growing focus on mindfulness in the workplace?
Well, we can start with that final question, which is pertinent to my overall point. The reason that managements are so interested in mindfulness is that it gives them “plausible deniability” if a worker suffers from some kind of mental health issues, as in “But look! We handed out pamphlets, sent emails, encouraging folks to take care of themselves. If X didn’t do this, we can’t be held legally responsible.”…and what we see there is the central point: you, the worker, are responsible for your own mental health. Not the company or institution, not the environment in which you work, not your living conditions, but you. In this formulation, the capitalist structure in which you are forced to live and work is blameless and, in this, we are not living in the present, but returning to the past.
In the nineteenth century, we see mental health issues (hereafter, MHI) as being genetic, that is, as being inherited. As such, MHI are passed from parents to offspring, environment plays no role. This is in keeping with nineteenth century medicine in general, and connects with the eighteenth century idea (in fact we can trace this back to Galen in regard to women) that biology is destiny. In the eighteenth century, this is clear in Art of the day, particluarly when one examines the novel: take Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Uldolpho, for example, in which Emily’s ‘femininity” is based on her bodily reactions. The more she faints, blushes, cries, the more feminine she is (an idea of “feminine perfection”). These bodily ‘traumas’ indicate two important factors: firstly, the biological organ seen as controlling women was the heart (emotion is, in the phrase we’re all familiar with, written on the body) and, secondly, it is her body, and its affect on her mental states, that cause her to be in need of male protection (Emily is passed, after a series of ‘adventures’, from father to son-in-law. Marriage is seen, as it was in the seventeenth century, the guarantor of male inheritance). Her female weakness against males can be seen as her female strength (in that it makes her desirable to those males who would protect her). Thus, the human person, in this figuration, is complete and of themselves – there is no reference to the outside world, to the sociopolitical environment that they inhabit.
I don’t want to get pulled off course, but it is worth mentioning Samuel Richardson’s Pamela here.Although this follows the same patterns of female biology coupled to MHI, it also includes another interesting factor: class. Pamela is a ‘maidservant’, and is therefore forced to inhabit the enclosed spaces of the “big house” in which she works. These spaces become increasingly dangerous for her as she is pursued by the aristocrat, who is intent on “possessing her” (“sexual assault and rape” are more accurate terms) in precisely the same way that he possesses the other objects that he owns. As a woman, she must protect her ‘virtue’, the only bargaining chip she possesses to negotiate with those who own the means of production. Still, this is for another time…
So. The novel which illustrates this idea of what we might call “genetic inheritance” perfectly is Dickens’ Oliver Twist. In this we see (or rather hear) Oliver, who is born in the workhouse, never knowing his mother, speaking perfect RP the first time he opens his mouth – despite having spent his life surrounded by grotesque cockney caricatures. His entire bourgeois perception and manner is passed on by genetics, not the environment. In general, this is highly convenient product of capitalist ideology: the human person is a self-contained unit on whom the environment has little, if any, effect. Therefore, the working class are ‘lazy’ and ‘feckless’ because they just are, that’s how it is. Aristocrats are entitled to govern because they are…nor do the same rules and laws apply to those of different genetic make-ups (we really haven’t moved on from Plato if we accept this – look at his idea of a “ruling elite” laid out in The Republic).
The advent of Freud’s theories (to which I’ll return) and WWI in the twentieth century marked a move away from this kind of genetic theory. In one sense, WWI marks the break: it becomes apparent that environment is not only an influence on MHI, but the influence, as thousands return from the war changed, altered and shattered by their experiences. This period also marks, of course, the rise of socialism and communism (the latter for a couple of years before the advent of Stalin), the growing recognition that the supposed “ruling class” have no divine right to do so.
As the twentieth century progresses, this idea of environment being the the governing factor in constructing human behaviour gradually gains ground…until the appearance of Reagan and Thatcher in the late 70s and early 80s.
With the return of populist politics (debatable I know, but populism began long before Trump, Johnson et al) in the 80s, we also see, as a fundamental element of right-wing ideology, the notion of “genetic determinism”, in terms of both sex and class. Both Thatcher and Reagan create ‘ideals’ based on nostalgia, a harking back to a past that never existed. Once again, we see gender difference (a cultral product) wheeled out as sexual difference, together with, in Thatcher’s case, a neo-nazi representation of the working class as being idle, criminal and rebellious. What we also see is what was known as “the centre left” taking a distinct step towards the right, aded by the collapse of the Soviet Union. This collapse (cf. Fukuyama’s The End of History) is seen as the victory of capitalism over ‘communism’ (which the Soviet Union wasn’t but, again, that’s for another time). Perhaps I should replace “what we also see” with “what we experience”.
Anyway, this isn’t some kind of political history, but with the advent of Blair in the UK, neoliberalism ever-more rampant, laying the ground for the emergence of anarcho-capitalism.
A central theme of this is the return to the idea of genetic determinism which, in effect means, that you, and you alone, are responsible for what we might call “your situation”. Gradually, the connection between human persons is replaced by a contract between individuals, the idea of community s replaced by “groups of individuals with the same interests (at the moment)” and, from these, emerges the nostrum of mindfulness.
The central idea of mindfulness, in its current incarnation, is that the individual is responsible for their own mental health, and that the basis of this mental health is genetic. If you find yourself unable to cope with the stresses and pressures of life, this is because of a flaw in you; it is because you have not taken care of your ‘self’ adequately. Therefore, MHIs are your responsibility, your fault. They have nothing to do with the environment that you inhabit – MHIs are manifestations of your own personal weaknesses. This is, of course, a highly convenient “get out” clause for capitalist ideology. If you have an MHI then you, and you alone, are responsible for taking the action to ‘cure’ it – put another way, to overcome your weakness. Mental health becomes just another figuration in which market forces can decide the level…can decide on what it means to be human.
Why spend so much time on this topic? Because the rise of mindfulness, its apparent acceptance by large sections of ‘society’ (particularly those sections that control the flow of ideas), requires us to rethink moral theory. If we discount, as mindfulness does, the influence of environment, the idea of competing rationalities, the idea of responsibilites to others, the idea of a community of human persons, then our moral theorising cannot continue as it has done. Our categories become absolutes, absolutes constructed by a ruling elite whom we have no business challenging. Market forces assume the role of God in the middle ages: you are assigned a role in society, and that role is you, is all that you are, because it is ordained by market forces/God. We must simply accept our roles because, with the univocal rationality that operates in this ‘world’, they are ours.
Of course, what we are doing by engaging with mindfulness is accepting a particular discourse (which is merely a structure – one amongst many – of interpreting the world) as if it were the only way of seeing, of perceiving, the world in which we live. This is precisely the way that the ‘themes’ of capitalist ideology attempt to inscribe themselves into the metanarrative of our existence, of our being-in-the-world. They pass themselves off as being unassailable, as being “just the way things are”.
The idea, for argument’s sake, of asserting “yes, human persons in this particular system, are constructed as self-interested individuals, but we must strive to recognise and rationally overcome this” is not considered, even for a moment. Capitalist ideology fosters an idea of laisser faire: we surrender ourselves to (spurious) ideas of the ‘natural’ and “human nature”, never contemplating that these (i) are ideological constructs or, (ii), that we can challenge and reformulate these. Simply because something is ‘natural’ does not mean we have to act on it, nor does it mean (even if we accepted it) that we cannot overcome it.
The central point is that these constructs are ideological and as such they can be deconstructed, traced back to their roots.
This kind of analysis is found, academically, in philosophy, sociology and in literary theory but, as a matter of course in the Arts which, as a matter of course, encourage us to see the everyday anew.
Murmurs from the Forest 