Mindfulness as I see it

I’ll give you an example of mindfulness in action. One of the great weight loss “secrets” is to drink really cold water. In the mindfulness approach to life you would see this as insane. You use energy to chill or even freeze water so you body will burn more energy reheating this water once you drink it and this will burn the excess energy taken in by eating too much food that would otherwise be stored as fat. So the basic idea is to use even more energy to cancel the effects of already wasted excess energy. Crazy.

The justification seems to be that it is not possible for a mere human to have or develop the self discipline to just not be wasteful in the first place. In my opinion this requires a pretty negative self image and that’s the rub. Negative self image is THE money maker in the modern service based economy. If you are a good competent individual it’s a lot harder for me to get your productivity away from you than if you are worthless trash and only I hold your salvation.

Mindfulness isn’t good for the economy. And that mean that while mindfulness might be good for you that means it isn’t good for us. But to believe that you first has to assume that overconsumption is good for us.