Mindful Destruction: How Self-Improvement Can Add Superpower To Bad Societal Design
Mindful Destruction: How Self-Improvement Can Add Superpower To Bad Societal Design
If we become more attuned without changing the worldviews that drive our existing society, are we not just getting better at social destruction?
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How many times have you heard something to the effect of: “If only everyone became more mindful or meditative, we’d make the world a much better place.”
I think it’s true to some extent. People generally become kinder and more open when mindful, but would this solve the issues caused by our societal design? Likely not.
Being a good meditator or engaging in spiritual practice and changes in societal design aren’t necessarily connected.
As I’ve suggested for a while, to create a world focused on human and natural thrivability (one and the same,) attention needs to be intentionally placed.
In my CE Insight from last weekend, I resurrected a piece I wrote in 2014 about changing conversations. In that piece, I discussed my perspective on how culture is born, and how culture subsequently informs human action within society.
I will share a relevant excerpt below:
“If we imagine culture as the values and belief systems that become normal for a group of people, or even an entire country, we can see how they determine how we understand ourselves and our place in the world. These values also determine how we make meaning and define purpose in life.
From here, culture informs how we design and coordinate the actions we take.
If our attention is always placed on the old ways of doing things, the old ways of knowing and being - our conversations will always be the same and continually reinforce old patterns and actions.”
Two key takeaways from this:
The way we see our world and choose to design our social infrastructures is a reflection of culture. That culture is driven by the stories we believe about who we are. We find purpose and meaning based on the combined stories of what culture sets forth as valuable and what we do within the society culture has built.
Conversation is the driver of shared awareness and exploration of possibility. Conversation can shape culture and thus shape change. To change our world we need to change conversation.
Specific to point 2, just because we are more mindful, well, and meditative, doesn’t mean we are suddenly changing the conversation around societal design.
The good news though, something is emerging in people that is not making them feel good about our existing culture and social design. People inherently know there is a problem, but aren’t sure what to do about it.
This is often referred to as a meaning crisis.
In an attempt to fix that problem, self-help strategies, including mindfulness, meditation and other wellness practices have emerged to ease the pain. But they are often sold in the context of helping people cope with the difficulty of the world, or even giving people an edge over others by becoming less stressed and more efficient at playing the game.
The Rise of Wellness
The rise of wellness in our society is apparent right now, and don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing. Mindfulness, presence and contemplative practices are a big part of solving the meaning crisis if we can apply them in specific contexts.
I remember learning about mindfulness in 2006 when I was working with a counsellor about wanting to leave College.
I was 18 or 19 years old and wasn’t happy being in college. I felt I had to be there because everyone around me told me “That’s what you have to do.”
I knew I was smart enough to stay and I loved learning, but I have never liked the structure of schooling and felt like it was getting in the way of what I cared about.
My counsellor taught me mindfulness techniques and ways of coming to understand my own feelings in order to make my own decisions. At the time, they were very powerful and exactly what I needed to free myself from my current pain. Some of those tools have become a part of my life since.
The key for me at that time was that something deeper was trying to emerge from me, and mindfulness and introspection helped me explore and step into the unknown.
I expanded my exploration of mindfulness, spirituality, and consciousness even more from 2009 onwards. It was a way for me to deeply understand myself and my potential, and ask the big life questions that were important to me.
Why is our world designed the way it is?
Why are humans and nature not thriving?
How could we design our world to make it thrive?
When I would talk about these tools back then I got weird stares from most people. It’s funny because, many of these ideas have been around for thousands of years, yet were only more palatable in other areas of the world or in Western spiritual circles.
Today though it’s different. Conversations around wellness and mindfulness have grown to become virtually mainstream.
Mainstream Wellness: Framing is Everything
I want to re-iterate again so it is clear: the rise in cultural awareness around wellness is necessary and important. More on this soon.
Massive corporations are introducing mindfulness programs to their employees. It is estimated that around 50% of large corporations offer some sort of mindfulness training to their employees. And while this is great for them to feel better and have less stress, which is needed, there is another side to this I believe we have to watch out for: some people/corporations are actually just becoming better at extractive economies.
First off, corporations are still going to measure everything based on how it increases or decreases job performance and profit. Some programs are successful and some aren’t. But let’s look at it deeper.
Imagine the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or all of the oil companies are incorporating mindfulness programs. Stress is reduced in their workplace and people now have access to greater creativity and work potency, are they not just going to get better at old outdated ideas involved in the maximization of profit and environmental destruction?
Imagine Google, YouTube, and Facebook all have these programs, which most do, are they suddenly going to stop censorship, spying on users, and data extraction? Or might they come up with better ways of censoring? Chances are, increased creativity will be applied to their current ways of thinking, not new ones.
If you spend enough time in the entrepreneurial space you will often find people hell-bent on trying to get an edge over everyone else. Cold showers, saunas, meditations, ice baths, microdosing, psychedelic journeys… all of this is being done to be BETTER at business and defeat their competition. Maybe even to get over that 6 or 7 figure hump.
Being successful in your business is not an issue, in fact, it’s necessary right now. Too often people try to pretend money is not important in our current moment. It is. It’s very important. If conscious companies don’t have a budget they die, and so does their influence. In the short term, people need to invest in the world they want to see, not hinder it by suggesting it shouldn’t be allowed to make money.
However, the point I’m making above about the context wellness practices are being used, especially in the West, is that a mindset of symptom management or hyper-individualized dominance, without regard for the effects of actions, is still the primary driver.
It’s a subtle point, but an important one. Without changing the worldviews that drive our culture and societal design, wellness practices may just make us better at our current game. We end up avoiding the actual cause of our social issues by trying to feel better in the ‘mess,’ or seeking to dominate others while the mess is happening.
The eerie part is many entrepreneurs I’ve shared time with at meetings, masterminds, and retreats know exactly how to say the RIGHT things to sound like they are trying to create a better world, but in reality, they are still just looking out for their own social dominance and financial empire. Their actions speak much louder than their words.
The old worldview is still emerging but with a new mask.
A Different Proposal
In order to help emerge a new story and thriving world, I believe we need to consider using mindfulness and wellness as a driver for an emerging future, not as a mechanism to create dominance or cope with our existing world. And see how this can change the conversation around societal design.
Our world will not change overnight, and some magical flash from the sun isn’t going to just shift everyone’s consciousness and magically emerge new systems. Instead, we are the creators and the makers of our social structures - just like it always has been. Welcome to the playground called Earth.
This means in order to shift, we must explore how we as individuals are going to do that.
One core principle for me is for us to be clearer, stronger and more attuned as individuals. Connected to our hearts with an open mind and a strong desire to truly listen and feel ourselves, each other and the nature of our situation. Simply put, inner transformation and skill-building is important.
Another core principle is the need to better understand the nature of our world, its systems, and how they are interconnected with our consciousness. Drivers of social issues are not simple to understand much of the time as our social systems are complex.
Awareness is the beginning of both principles. To be aware of our own inner transformation, thinking, state of being, presence etc… is to practice mindfulness and self awareness.
To explore the nature of our existing systems, converse with others, and take in the perspectives of all stakeholders, requires a willingness to show up in that capacity. That requires action and conversation driven by mindfulness and self awareness.
Both represent approaching our world from a different level of consciousness. Full circle, both help us change the conversation that creates our culture.
In that context, mindfulness is used as a driver of an emerging future, not as one to simply become better at the old strategies of wealth hoarding and social dominance. Further, a new worldview emerging through conversation can change the values we place on human beings. Instead of gushing over rich millionaires and billionaires, we can see humans and their value outside of money, popularity and fame.
When we think about mindfulness and wellness today, is it leading to meaningful change and the building of a more thriving and regenerative world? Or is entrepreneurial and corporate power still stuck in high-profit mode, maybe with ‘sustainability’ as a goal?
I downplay ‘sustainability’ intentionally here. I don’t believe it’s enough. To simply keep something alive doesn’t seek to explore its living potential more deeply. It leads to doing the bare minimum and changing the bare minimum.
To summarize, I don’t believe in the all-out rejection of our existing moment as it’s needed right now. Global change will be a transition, it will take time, and having one foot in the old world and one in the unknown is necessary. I believe that addressing both mindfulness and social transformation together is a key part of collectively exploring and emerging a thriving future.
I hear your concern for our world continuing down the same path as we pat ourselves on the head for being more "mindful." I think part of this "losing ground as we gain consciousness" has to do with language taking on mindful overtones that have lost connection to the spiritual ground from which they sprang. When I think of "mindfulness" I think of Tich Nat Hanh and my first introduction to compassion. There is a presence in our world that would like to use "mindfulness" but will be sure to divorce it from any divine connection Tich Nat Hanh made before introducing its AI-formulated cousin. when you speak of our societal culture as being a reflection of the way we see our world and choose to design our social infrastructures--I agree that culture is driven by the stories we believe about who we are. For me, the three plus COVID years were such an important period of standing my belief system on its head and demanding that I "Look again" and then "Look again." It was both very disturbing and uncomfortable and very freeing at the same time. On my spiritual path--and probably many others--we call this phenomena "being in the wilderness." You have stepped off the pavement and are now in that place of "unknowing" and only Knowledge--that deeper Intelligence of the Mind of God within us--can lead us through this uncharted territory. It is an exciting and scary place to be. It is what the trapeze artist feels when they have let go of the first trapeze and are turning to catch the next. They have faith it will be there but they do not "know" until their hands connect with certainty. I can only say that I am grateful for having the rug pulled out from under me and having my world view totally shaken. There is a deeper Intelligence that will help us navigate this very strange new world and we really are all ONE with this Intelligence. It is who we truly are--but can we let go of the thought that we are our minds and the ideas and beliefs--borrowed from our parents, our religious leaders, our educators, our govt--that we have used to make up our identity? I think the COVID years were critical to me in pushing me beyond my ideas and beliefs. I hate to think that this is what was required for me to see a different REALITY than the one I was living. But I am grateful to have been shaken and challenged and I hope to be much more awake and aware and discerning as I move further into this new world. When our closely held ideas and beliefs are holding a world paradigm in place that is very likely to mean our extinction or enslavement to other races whose agenda it is to take over our little blue green world--are those stakes high enough to cause us to turn and "Look again and again" until we can see beyond to the larger reality that is staring us in the face?
With regards to Google, YouTube, and Facebook suddenly stopping censorship, spying on users, and data extraction, i think is an impossibility. All of these icons of the on-line world were independent start-ups at the very beginning, that were identified as being viable mediums for just that -- censorship, surveillance and data extraction, and they were then taken over for just this purpose and given a massive boost financially and influence-wise, to become the leaders they are now. They are also operated by AI which only mimics human intelligence but really has no use for mindfulness and the programming it has with regards to societal change, is to make all of us all into obedient, self-less components of the technocratic state. The fact that it seems impossible to make a viable business in shifting society towards compassion and wellness, w/o utilizing these giants shows what it is that we're up against.
Also the on-line medium lacks some essential qualities for human interaction like being able to feel the emotions of the people we are interacting with, which makes it easy for it to be hijacked by ulterior agendas w/o being aware of it happening.
In regards to making it in the business world, it is really having Personal Power that matters. The Kabbalists know this. It seems to me that money was, in a way, created to obscure Personal Power by tying our life force to money rather than to Personal Power, so that when we lose money we feel a drain on our life force and can often fall into depression. If we can keep the making money at arms length and focus on building our Personal Power instead, 'success' takes on a different character. Of course we don't need to focus on money or 'wealth' at all and simply manifest what we need, but 'what we really need' will most effectively be determined by our soul's purpose in life, not by current societal norms. It would be ideal to have society oriented to fulfilling everyone's soul's purpose, but the idea of "soul" is exactly what the transhumanists want eradicated from our conceptual vocabulary, since they can't achieve merging us with AI if we are still connected to our soul.
i studied psychology at uni in the 70s when the driving force behind personal change and societal evolution was the concept of 'human potential' -- that just in being human we inherently have a deep wellspring of untapped, and even yet unnamed, potential, to be and do much more than previous societal norms have had us believe we are able to. Also there was the understanding that using holistic psychotherapies, some of which were developed at the time, we can clear our blocks and barriers to actualizing this hidden 'human potential' each of us has. This also gave the name to approaches in line with this understanding, as -- humanistic psychotherapy. The idea of 'mindfulness', of bringing awareness to bear on what is going on behind the scenes of our individual personality structure, is also in line with this greater understanding of 'human potential'.
i know that times change, and maybe i'm holding on to the past, but the popular therapeutic approaches i see today seem like 'hacking' to me, and even the concept of 'hacks' to get the effect you want without all the messing around, seems like a strived for ideal today. But under the concept of human potential, how would one know beforehand the result they wanted to achieve from doing a practice or using a psychotherapeutic approach ? Generally in going through a deep psychotherapeutic process, one's personality dynamics change significantly to where they become oriented to new experiences life offers, rather than those that were driven by their unresolved and unconscious complexes.
The concept of 'human potential' does seem to be hijackable however, as can be seen in Yuval Noah Harari's book, Homo Deus -- which is approached from what amazing effects on our world are potentially possible for us to create, rather than from what is the inherent potential that is already part of each of us, that will lead to a new and more fulfilling engagement with the world. The concept of 'soul' is inherent to our makeup, however, and can't easily be hijacked. Tanis Helliwell's book, Take Your Soul To Work: Transform Your Life And Work, is a good example of learning to orient our life around our soul's input. But this way of effecting change, is definitely not to be taken as a hack.