Mindfulness och Marx
En lång, vindlande text, om upptakten till kriget i forna Jugoslavien, psykoanalysens tillstånd, hur också denna kontaminerats av processen han beskriver (Zizek är själv analytiker), för att till sist landa i detta med “västerländsk buddhism”.
Har han en poäng? Själv upplever jag att han har det.
“Although ‘Western Buddhism’ presents itself as the remedy against the stressful tension of the capitalist dynamics, allowing us to uncouple and retain the inner peace and Gelassenheit, it actually functions as its perfect ideological supplement.
One should mention here the well-known topic ‘future shock,’ i.e. of how, today, people are no longer psychologically able to cope with the dazzling rhythm of the technological development and the social changes that accompany it – things simply move too fast, before one can accustom oneself to an invention, this invention is already supplanted by a new one, so that one more and more lacks the most elementary ‘cognitive mapping.’
The recourse to Taoism or Buddhism offers a way out of this predicament which definitely work better than the desperate escape into old traditions: instead of trying to cope with the accelerating rhythm of the technological progress and social changes, one should rather renounce the very endeavour to retain control over what goes on, rejecting it as the expression of the modern logic of domination – one should, instead, ‘let oneself go,’ drift along, while retaining an inner distance and indifference towards the mad dance of the accelerated process, a distance based on the insight that all this social and technological upheaval is ultimately just a non-substantial proliferation of semblances which do not really concern the innermost kernel of our being.
‘Western Buddhism’ thus perfectly fits the fetishist mode of ideology in our allegedly ‘post-ideological’ era. ‘Western Buddhism’ is such a fetish: it enables you to fully participate in the frantic pace of the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless this spectacle is – what really matters to you is the peace of the inner Self to which you know you can always withdraw.
One is almost tempted to resuscitate here the old infamous Marxist cliche of religion as the ‘opium of the people,’ as the imaginary supplement of the terrestrial misery: the ‘Western Buddhist’ meditative stance is arguably the most efficient way, for us, to fully participate in the capitalist dynamics, while retaining the appearance of mental sanity.
If Max Weber were to live today, he would definitely write a second, supplementary, volume to his ‘Protestant Ethic’, entitled ‘The Taoist Ethic and the Spirit of the Global Capitalism’.”
Detta är ett utdrag ur en både innehållsligt o typografiskt “tät” essä man kommer till via den här länken:
https://www.lacan.com/zizek-self.htm
Minns jag läste nånstans, en spaning, att i början var den alternativa andligheten samhällsengagerad, ville förändra, rubba den gamla ordningen. Men har över tid fått mer fokus på individen själv, den personliga optimeringen, “finn ditt inre lugn”, etc.
Man kan inte dra allt över den berömda kammen. Det finns ett genuint sökande efter det autentiska också. Men, jag tror han har en poäng o beskriver drivkraft o baksida av en hel del med den stora mindfulness/yoga/finn dig själv-boomen.