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MIDDLE CLASS MINDFULNESS AND CLASS CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE MODERN WORLD J O S H TAY L O R

It seems as though we live in a time where one cannot escape mindfulness. Meditation apps and yoga YouTube channels follow us round every corner, and Matthew McConaughey’s voice gently seduces us off to sleep. And rightly so. With social media, the constant news cycle, Oxford deadlines, the climate crisis, FOMO, and everything else on the list, mindfulness is an incredibly useful tool for helping our mental health and easing the stresses of life. As with all medicine, though, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Buzzwords and phrases like ‘toxic positivity’ have started to emerge to describe the occasionally overwhelming pressure one can feel to be mindful, but another equally toxic aspect of mindfulness has come to the surface recently, which I shall call middle-class mindfulness.

Middle-class mindfulness is characterised by an approach to mental health and wellbeing that focuses too heavily on cognitive behaviours (being present, noticing negative thoughts, and so on) and not enough on the various factors external to one’s mind that carry an effect too. Material conditions have just as tangible an impact on physical and mental health as the more ethereal and illusive culprits like social media do, but middle-class mindfulness is the type of mindfulness that, deliberately or not, ignores this fact.

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In and of itself and with the right audience, this is not an issue. Everyone is entitled to their wellbeing and, generally, this brand of mindfulness is directly marketed to those for whom material conditions aren’t a problem. And good for them. Who doesn’t love a good stretch and being pampered on a regular basis? People with no material concerns are allowed to do mindfulness just as much as the rest of us.

The reason this brand of the movement threatens to become a problem is when the idea emerges that the only thing we can improve in this world is our mental behaviours. While it is no doubt the case for a great many people that their mental behaviours are the main cause of their mental health issues, it is equally certain that for a great many people material conditions are just as, if not even more, contributory to their difficulties.

Deep-breathing for ten minutes every morning is far more effective for someone who doesn’t also have to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, or how they are going to heat the house this winter. Slogans like ‘romanticise your life’ and ‘everyday magic’ are great if they help you find happiness, but they are not onesize-fits-all solutions to the multi-faceted reasons for people’s mental health issues.

The narrative of perception perpetuated by this type of mindfulness is also dangerous insofar as it implicitly alienates and marks as inferior those for whom material conditions are such that middle-class mindfulness is of little use. Like a cloud of fog, the narrative descends between people’s perceptions and their compassion; concepts like inner peace or oneness can unintentionally create an us vs. them conflict between the ‘enlightened’ and those still struggling with their mental health, because under narratives of perception, the only reason one might be mentally ill is because they aren’t seeing the world in the right way. What is arguably even worse, however, is the knock-on effect that these narratives of perception can have on wider political concepts like class-consciousness. Middle-class mindfulness is excruciatingly individualistic, placing a burden on individuals to change cog


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