The quiet art of attention

I don't know if it's just me, but it feels like a very deliberate choice that this wasn't written in the easy-to-comprehend, easy-to-grasp style that's so prevalent online. It's harder. It requires, to some degree, even slightly, conscious effort to parse.

It feels like the perfect union of form and content, at least given the constraints of it being online, which by its very nature encourages distractions, flitting from one thing to another, reading many things, comprehending none, constantly switching what we're doing. (I noticed this while reading that - the urge to read something easier, simpler, with more shiny attention-grabbing things. It's the first time I've seriously experimented with Google's reading mode.) But, of course, a print publication, better-suited to the form, would get much less traction.

I think this is the sort of pro-business new age junk "meditate to become better at work" that's purposely dressed up in rhetorical robes, no different than the religion many here have fled.

I mean, this mind stuff doesn't really work if you're mentally ill, chronically stressed, worried about work/bills/relationships, chronically ill, stressed from caring for children/elderly, stressed from war/politics, oppressed, etc and I say that as a two decades long Buddhist practitioner and meditator.

All this wavey-gravy stuff doesn't work without some type of moral framework. When he says "strength" what exactly does he mean? When he says 'life is meant to be this way' how can he possibly defend what life is meant to be? This is just a lot of empty nothings dressed up as important.

What we do know is that we're animals evoloved from other animals that until very recently lived in smaller tribal groups or nomadic settlements, where our society saw innate value in us, had an extended family taking care of us, etc. Our modern life is the opposite of that. We're sort of shoved into the capitalist system, told to figure out a career and often after traumatizing 13+ years of schooling, then thrown into the job market, dealing with the pain of full time work if we can even get a steady good job which a lot of people don't, dealing with a system not invested in us but would love to get rid of us especially if we're costly, different, queer, minority, old, 'not competitive', not a good 'culture fit', neurodivergent, etc.

So what do these essays really do? Not much. You will never revisit it. You will never bother because why? It doesnt fit your ethics or philosophy. Its empty pablum. Now if you built out values and said, "Productivity and business norms, as we know it, is actually bad and that's the cause of much of this pain, and we should be building frameworks, businesses, governments, and social norms to encourage downtime, rest, meditation-like activities, etc." Then yes, go for it, but be warned this will take you down a path where you'll be attacked for it for being anti-capitalist or socialist or whatever. Your friends, relatives, coworkers, etc you saw on your side will fight you. Your political party will label you a dangerous radical. So instead we get "just try to think like a zen buddhist to finish your TPS reports," junk like this, that very much ignores the elephant in the room. The world is on fire, its perfectly normal to feel stressed at that. Your stress is often valid and comes from a valid place.

So like you said, its written in this 'spiritual master' kind of way to give it gravitas it doesn't deserve, to make it seems more important than it is, and to fool people into thinking they're the problem and their lack of "mind mastery" is the problem, instead of the system that causes all this pain. Why are you so worried, those are valid worries! Why do you rush through things? You're not given enough time! Why are you dealing with trauma and burnout? Because that's what our system leads to, especially for skill workers and other types of workers weighed heavily on productivity.

"Mind mastery," is the new 'stiff upper lip' or 'skill issue' or 'quit complaining.' That is to say, its the new con to keep the status quo working as-is to benefit the few. You should be complaining and advocating for change that allows you more downtime, rest, "detigering" yourself, and such so that "mind mastery" isn't this ridiculous task but something that can start coming easier for us because we are then given the resources, time, cultural norms, and buy-in to achieve it. Look at how many retired people get into things like time in nature, slow burn experiences, writing novels, making art, meditation, contemplation, spirituality, a slow lifestyle, etc when before they are rushed and stressed 24/7. When we give people room, they will naturally gravitate towards stuff like this. We should be giving more room to the workers who haven't retired because they want this too and they won't get it via flowery essays, but via downtown, less work hours, better workplaces, better benefits, more social buy-in, more regulation that benefit the working class, valuing low stress and slower lifestyles, investment in mental health resources, medicine access for all, longer vacations, guaranteed long maternity/paternity, etc.

If you're denied many of these thing all the 'mind mastery' junk in the world doesn't work. You'll just float between guys like this, books from Buddhists, books from Stoics, Sun Tzu, Toaism, New Age, secular humanism, theraputic models, various psychiatric drugs, etc and none of it will really work because the system isn't giving you the space and resources to actually become a "mind master" or whatever you want to call it. In fact, being a "mind master" may be a fool's errand, at least past a certain level of practicing meditation. Sad things are supposed to make us sad, hard things should stress us, vulnerable things should be said and respected for being said, etc. Being "above it all with no feeling" is a ridiculous maladaption to a harmful system.

Yes, meditation and mindfulness are nice but they're a bandaid, and a lot of people, I'd say 99% of us, don't need bandaids we need surgery, that is to say, the system is injuring us faster than we can heal and at that point, the path to actual healing, having a relaxed mind, etc is systemic change, not these little essays that say very little, if anything, of substance. This is why people float from new age stuff and self-help stuff and back and forth and back and forth with new 'gurus' and 'truth tellers' and such discovered and discarded their whole lives and never get relief. This stuff doesn't work because their boats are filling with water faster than they can empty it. No flowery prose changes that reality.

So if your skeptical meter is going off, this is probably why, and you're valid to question these narratives and their presentation.

I think a lot of us find value in mindfulness. I don't think that value is new; modern age or no, people have been using these techniques for a long time.

I agree with some of what you say, although I think it idealizes the past more than it deserves. My mother fled small town America exactly because it was intrusive and allowed very little divergence from small-town values. The embrace and care came with a price tag.

Being a human has always been hard. Peasants struggled with material scarcity, a system that was brutally unfair, and very constraining social expectations.

And I have suffered from depression, particularly post-divorce. I know what it is like. Mindfulness won't eliminate that, but it does help, and it's far more than a band-aid. Mindfulness is, in many ways, clarifying your thoughts... realizing that you have have a tape loop repeating things that don't seem useful or related to the circumstance. Seeing that your emotional weather comes and goes. We don't escape the weather, but to be aware of it allows us to better account for it in our thinking.