Parts of mindfulness practice may be useful, but does that mean you have to embrace the entire belief system associated with mindfulness practice – that is, an ideology with religious overtones?
Concern with status is part of our animal heritage. The regard of others is a scarce resource; therefore, we compete for it. Appealing and available mates are scarce: therefore, we compete for them.
Protecting biological communities in specific locales is a worthy goal. Saving endangered species and creating robust habitats for them to thrive is another worthy goal. These goals are not always in perfect harmony.
You think you have high standards for discerning the truth of the matter? Then you must be able to imagine counterevidence to your theories of how the world works. At the very least.
In a variation on the “Wason selection task”, students in a research study were asked to test the rule “if a card has D on one side, it has a 3 on the other”. They were then shown four cards, which had either a letter (D or F) or a number (3 or 7) on them, and were asked which cards they would turn over to validate the rule. The correct answer was ...
Trump supporters are often portrayed as economically stressed victims of globalization and the decline of US manufacturing, worried about job security and stagnating incomes. But as the last post documented, they do not appear to be plagued by trouble finding work. By and large, Trump Country has low unemployment rates.
Trump supporters have been portrayed as victims of globalization and the decline of US manufacturing, stuck in low-paid jobs offering little in the way of job security or earning potential. Angry and desperate, the story goes, they flocked to that champion of the scorned and neglected, Donald J. Trump, who would kick out the corrupt elites, restore hope, heal pride, and make America great again.
The narrative goes something like this: Trump supporters are a bunch of profoundly unhappy bigots, ill-educated country bumpkins left behind by the forces of globalization, plagued by job insecurity, battered down by inequality, worried sick about their future, consumed by resentment of the liberal elites and racist to the core.
For the sake of argument, let’s say that adopting mindfulness as a way of being contributes to happiness and physical health. Then again, belonging to almost any faith community increases happiness and physical health. That fact alone doesn’t entice me to convert or join. Truth-value matters.
Sometimes labeling, reducing (making little and laughable), and purposely ignoring complexity can be useful. We don’t have to give our full attention and cognitive resources to everything. We have to choose: does this matter enough?
As previous posts have amply shown, I'm not a big fan of mindfulness as a quasi-religious ideology. I’m not going to propose a specific counter-ideology. Sure, I have beliefs about what makes life worthwhile, what matters, the is and the ought.
One can benefit from mindfulness practice without believing that suffering is the main fact of life, desire is undesirable because it is the source of suffering, or that modern life is teaming with toxic elements.
Pace Jon Kabat-Zinn, who says mindfulness is a way of being that cannot be reduced to a set of techniques, I’m going to propose that mindfulness practice can indeed be considered as a bunch of techniques.
In their analysis of survey responses regarding proposed federal policies, Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page compare the policy preferences of “average citizens” versus “economic elites.
In their paper Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens (2014), Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page analyze survey data on public support for proposed federal policies.
“Good research is cautious about drawing conclusions, careful to identify uncertainties and avoids exaggerated claims. It demands multiple types of evidence to reach a conclusion. It does not assume that association (things occur together) proves causation (one thing causes another). Bad research often contains jumps in logic, spurious arguments, and non-sequiturs (‘it does not follow’).” Todd Litman
A thought is not an inert object. A thought is a living thing: it is both propelled and goal-directed. Thoughts bring into being the unanticipated. Thoughts activate neural connections and open up worlds. Reducing thoughts to objects takes the life out of them – stops them in their tracks, unable to continue on their path...
“Mindfulness entails concentrated awareness of one’s thoughts, actions or motivations. Mindfulness involves continually bringing one’s awareness back into the present moment.”
What does it mean to have awareness in “the present moment”? What does it mean to be “present”? Why is it is desirable to be “present”?
Why are some objects more worthy of focal attention and other objects less worthy?
“Mindfulness entails concentrated awareness of one’s thoughts, actions or motivations. Mindfulness involves continually bringing one’s awareness back into the present moment.”
If “being present” involves a type of “parallel awareness” that co-exists with focal attention, what are the neurological correlates of “parallel awareness”? What evidence supports the existence of parallel awareness?