MINDFULNESS: Is It Deep or Dumb? – Wisecrack Edition

50 thoughts on “MINDFULNESS: Is It Deep or Dumb? – Wisecrack Edition”

1. Install Raid for Free ✅ IOS: http://bit.ly/32hT1ri ✅ ANDROID: http://bit.ly/32nvXHq Start with💰50K silver and get a Free Epic Champion 💥 on day 7 of “New Player Rewards” program. Thanks to Raid for sponsoring this video.

2. Mindfulness is just the start of something bigger

3. I ve been thinking seriously bout star wars and i think that while the sith are evil, the jedi are hollow bodies, with no fears and no ambitions

4. Acceptance and commitment therapy is a solution to this problem its focus on both mindfulness and commitment towards change as defined by values I agree without the commitment or value mindfulness is directionless

5. If a word cannot be simply defined its probably not a real thing. I've wanted to understand these ideas for a while now, but the deeper I look at them the more I'm convinced that mindfulness and meditation are just cultish woo woo. I've seen no concrete explanations of what they are, or how they are practiced, or how they are measured.

6. As an HR employee, can confirm the corporate shenanigans of "mindfulness" and "wellness." In a corporate context both of these things are crocks of horseshit. Avoid at all costs.

7. Tau mind control at work

8. Why the tobacco industry back to ruining things with dumb ideas by funding the vaccine to get rid of the pandemic

9. I was someone who used headspace habitually for a while and it did feel relaxing… thing is you don't need to pay for apps and shit like that after a while, it's just not necessary. And as for how it made me feel.. i can't really say, it did help a little but it was by no means life changing.

   I value deep breathing exercises over mindfulness, although both can be great.. I like to think of mindfulness in the way sam harris described it in that it's like your brain doing reps like a muscle would during a workout. You're essentially training your brain to aware of certain emotions or states of mind and i will tell you that it has worked for me, at least.. Training yourself to catch the very moment you're about to get too emotional over something or too anxious when it doesn't call for it is amazing, or just catching yourself in the way you stand, or sit down because those are things you just don;t usually think about during your daily routine.

   I like art of it but not the culture, i recommend deep breathing exercises for anyone looking to be less stressed and retain a clear mind in those situations.

10. Hey WISECRACK! I’ve been a long time fan (Thug Notes was my intro to your content…..BRING IT BACK, PLEASE!) , yet this is my first comment on any of your endless array of thought provoking, informative, and most of all, hilarious videos😇 On the topic of this post, “ McMindfulness” really shined a light on how the mass production of media pertaining to this practice has whitewashed it in the process,taking the Buddhism out of a Buddhist practice. That being said, breathing and focusing on how it makes you feel (besides alive) has the potential to help most people navigate through rough situations….it may also help them realize that said “situations “ are symptoms of bigger issues (mental illness, addiction, abuse, etc..) that may need to be handled with the help of specialized professionals to hopefully diagnose/pinpoint possible problematic conditions you may be suffering through. Next would be working together on an individualized strategy to help get through the anxiety/cravings/flashbacks/etc , and mindfulness/meditation may be an essential tool to not just “ get through “ these episodic symptoms but to learn to develop ways to avoid letting these occurrences lead to relapses/full on meltdowns/breaks in reality and other terrifying aftermaths of traumatic injuries (mental, physical, spiritual, etc). I was taught a few very simple, effective, time efficient scans that have saved me from making some very familiar mistakes that would have more than likely changed my goals (again) and led to depression that would’ve lasted way longer than the pleasure I experienced by going against my better judgement and reverting back to being overly impulsive. Spontaneity is amazing and keeps life interesting, but not if it leads to you blowing off things you’ve devoted yourself to that you are talented and successful at! To end my rambling, spontaneity for spontaneity’s sake isn’t the best way to go (speaking from my own experiences). And, mindfulness, as trendy and jaded as it is on its way to becoming, has the potential to help tons of people begin to learn why they themselves’ are their worst enemies. And that wasn’t meant to be snarky or cynical, it is a from the heart statement of sincerity. ❤️

11. I agree with everything here, but eventually groups of people who have strategies for mental health improvement will stop looking inward and evaluate their environmental situations. Such groups can and will challenge the institutions harming them and others.

12. Very well documented and put together!

13. I am a therapist so full exposure. Mindfulness is neither deep nor dumb. It is a tool like any other. It can't solve wider systemic causes of distress and stress not can it address unhelpful thinking patterns. But it can assist you to clear your mind which allows for being able to think more clearly. It is Like taking an aspirin for a headache. This will get rid of the headache but not necessarily the cause. It doesn't mean it shouldn't be used. It just means it shouldn't be used to the exclusion of other things. To be honest if you are religious prayer does the same thing. But most of us aren't so this achieves the same thing. There is an app called smiling mind which is free that I usually recommend to clients

14. You know as well as I it's all in the service of money. Can you do something on money? The difference of usury, demarrage and no cost? And that Human nature is more affected by its environment? You've just a litre to that in this video.

15. The problem isn’t mindfulness IMO. The problem is that basic self-care has been turned into a commodity, or at least has become grafted into corporate power structures as a way to make them seem more benevolent or at least less harmful than they actually are.

    Mindfulness most of the time works for you, but that it’s become a stopgap measure so we don’t have to deal with the thing that wrecks our collective mental health to begin with.

16. RAID FUCKING SHADOW MTRFKIN LEGENDS

17. I'm at 11:48 , and I can't believe the level of gatekeeping bullshit stupidity present in this video. What happened to you wisecrack? When did you go from being thought provoking to off the pretentious "deep" end?

    All the McMindfulness arguments are exclusionary arguments that say: "you can't have this thing without EVERYTHING I say goes along with it!" A simple demonstration of this fact is that Mindfulness relaxation techniques make people calm, and calm relaxed people are less likely to impulsively consume, impulsively harm themselves, or commit crimes.

    I don't like this "Deep or Dumb" segment either. With this video essay format it comes off as an academic lesson about facts rather then as a personal opinion piece. Combine that with the literal meaning of "Deep or Dumb", and suddenly you've made youself into the arbiter of what's empirically stupid and/or smart.

    It's deceptive from it's very conceptual inception.

18. I want to cut off mindfulness's face and rub it with salt.

    I fucking hate it.

    It makes me stressed, gives me anxiety, and it gives me more work to do. It's bullshit of the highest order.
    If it works for you, great, but don't be so smug to think that it'll work for everyone, and DON'T try to force it on me!

19. As a Neuroscientist and CHRONIC STRESS researcher – I can say CHRONIC stress is the most underappreciated life destroying agent that everyone, to some level, understands. By the military, Governments, Corporations, Hospitals or most people (4 years of research = too many to list here – If Wisecrack asks, I will answer with a list of at least 20 legit citations).
     
    If you were looking for the greatest research (and researcher) on Meditation and its effects – see my friend and Mentor Dr. Cliford Saron and his research. Summarized in this talk he gave: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d88Q-15W_AI Not surprising, his foundation started from EEG data he and a friend took from Tibetan Monks way back in the 60s/70s. Seriously. Watch the video. Its interesting. And you can understand why corporations would do exactly what Wisecrack describes. Obviously, they have missed the whole point. No "Right Thought, and Right Action"
     
    I think Fight Club (1 – yes there are 3 "Fight Clubs" now), is the best satire on this perversion in our commodifide culture.

20. A Buddhist teacher who came to teach in the West once said something to the effect of: trying to achieve ultimate insight and liberation through mindfulness meditation without ethical commitments ("sila" in Pali) is a lot like trying to row a boat that you never untied from the dock. You can row as hard as you want, but you'll never get very far.

21. As a Buddhist practitioner, I was curious where you would go with this, and have to say I really appreciate you distinguishing between "McMindfulness" and Buddhist practice. My teacher recently was talking about the same issue- about how modern capitalist culture has taken mindfulness from the rest of the 8-fold path and reduced it to a commodity, which can NOT free us from our suffering, as it is not a complete path when taken apart from the other necessary pieces torte, deep peace and liberation from suffering.

22. Oh global politics need psychedelics – at least 12 ceremonies each of all major ones.

23. I think our problem is we worry so much about approval that we forfeit ourselves, and try to master what we think the world would like to see in us. Mindfulness helped me, but I slowly realized I didnt need any books to tell me about it.

24. Cell. Yeah. Selye.

25. Ok, so besides being grave appropriation and partial religion without context for those who practice it… which seem… obvious. If one is taking a non capitalist approach it sounds like it does help. For people who don't capitalize it and turn it into some selfish perversion of its intent…

26. I think Mindfulness is about giving clarity so you can make better decisions and take better actions.
    Excerpt from Mindfulness by Mark Williams:
    "It [Mindfulness] will not deaden your mind or prevent you from striving toward important career or lifestyle goals; nor will it trick you into falsely adopting a Pollyanna attitude to life. Meditation is not about accepting the unacceptable. It is about seeing the world with greater clarity so that you can take wiser and more considered action to change those things that need to be changed. Meditation helps cultivate a deep and compassionate awareness that allows you to assess your goals and find the optimum path towards realizing your deepest values."

    The book also goes on about how it's good for increasing reaction time and memory and helping with depression.

27. The Philosophy of Parasyte the Maxim.

28. The Philosophy of Parasyte the Maxim.

29. Excellent video … I wasnt sure where it was being taken as far as the mindfulness being good or bad part. But I agree with every second ., love it 💫💫

30. For me I'm just lazy to do anything. Plus I don't have a mind so I don't mind anybody.

31. I wish something had been mentioned about just how deep the psychotherapeutic qualities go. Mindfulness based cognitive therapy for example is the most effective treatment for treatment resistant major depressive disorder. The same is true for drug addiction. These are absolutely debilitating diseases that effect oceans of people. The costs are emotional, financial, environmental. While skepticism keeps the word mindfulness precise and meaningful, sometimes it is the best instrument, despite the bluntness of its use in so many contexts.

32. I think the main oversight of this video is what the actual science says about how mindfulness effects altruistic behavior. It’s a misconception that we have to be miserable in order to seek social justice, solutions for climate change and so on. In fact, mindfulness training has been proven to make people more generous, more willing to help, and more rational when they do it. The sort of speculative thinkpieces I’ve seen and read on this don’t typically go far into the research and as a result end up poisoning the well.

33. Mindfulness is being able to think over everything and not to think about just yourself

34. You should do an ad about how free 2 play cellphone games exploit addiction and neurochemically harm those that play them

    Brought to you by Shadow Legends

    Garbage, utter addictive subpar quality products, sponsoring videos to spread mindfulness. The irony.. oh.. the irony

    Please address the clear problem with the dependency on garbage products to fund media. Cant have advertisement and enlightenment, they cancel each other out

35. Hi. A practising (if a bit unconventional) Buddhist here. The ultimate point of "mindfulness" in Buddhism, is to achieve the state of "luminous mind", that is, the state of just "being aware of being aware" and not of anything else in particular¹. This "else" includes not only external things, but also internal ones, like thoughts, concepts, and, perhaps more importantly, the idea of "self"². By this measure, this practice can not be entirely successful if its aim is fundamentally self-serving — at least according to Mahayana sects. Even in the state of deep "zen"-like calm and bliss, this "self" thing can be a source of anxiety (e.g. "I don't want to lose this state of calm and bliss"³). The way to avoid this pitfall, again, at least according to Mahayana sects, is to cultivate bodhicitta, which among other things, means to acknowledge the existential suffering of all living beings, not just yourself, and to strive (or at least aspire) to help everyone, not just yourself. Hence, the Buddhist way to practice mindfulness is to practice it "for the benefit of all living beings"⁴, not "to relieve your stress". So yeah, for this "mindfulness" to be successful, at least in the Buddhist sense, we do need to attach a code of ethics to our meditation apps — Buddhist ethics, to be precise. Otherwise, it's at best a temporary reprieve.

    Well, that's my take on this whole thing anyway — informed by Buddhist teachings, that is, but still an opinion. But for what it's worth, I did experiment with all sorts of meditation techniques intermittently for over 15 years now, and it never stuck until I realized that approaching this all selfishly (that is, with the aim of "make myself feel better" or something like that) is not working. So it is also an opinion informed in large part by personal experience.

    ¹ This experience is often preceded or accompanied by the vision of clear light, hence "luminous".
    ² This "self" thing perhaps needs some expanded commentary. By "self" I do not mean the (almost) featureless foundation of the individual consciousness, but rather various descriptions (not all of those verbal) we invent for ourselves, which include, but is not limited to, self-image, self-esteem, different things (both external and internal) we like to think we have or own, etc.
    ³ Which is a self-contradictory statement, since the "calm and bliss" are the clear mind's natural state, and it's, strictly speaking, possible neither to "have", nor to "lose" it.
    ⁴ How can you practice mindfulness "for the benefit of all living beings" you might ask? Well, according to Buddhist doctrine, you can't really help anyone become free of existential suffering when you're in that state yourself, or at least you can't do that effectively. So it's still desirable to attain nirvana asap — but the end goal is to ultimately help others, not to wallow in the transcendent bliss and forget about everything else.

36. ooh lord. i got more wordy on this comment than i thought i would be, so apologies for that.
    tl;dr mindfulness isn't the only blame here bc it's only a result of the greater commercialization of self-help and self-care

    this could have been a commentary on the idea of self-help as a whole, not just mindfulness. mindfulness is an excellent skill that can genuinely help people *re*connect rather than disconnect from the greater issues of their lives. as the name suggests, it's supposed to make you more aware and more *mindful*.

    once i began practicing mindfulness myself, i actually became more aware of the way injustice happens all around me. in therapy, i learned that it could mean acknowledging that problems that i think are caused by me, are actually caused by a greater issue (often socio-economic ones out of my control), and not to internalize those issues as my own fault. i'm pretty sure that's not the argument that was being made here, where mindfulness is employed as a tool for workers to burden the guilt of their own stress.

    i agree that the practice has been grossly appropriated by consumerism and all its awfulness, but again mindfulness is only a part of the giant machine that capitalizes on self-help. it's pretty much said in the video: mindfulness puts all the burden on the worker, not the bigger abuse of labour around them. that's basically what the self-help/self-care movement has been. while of course it's important to recognize when it's time to not only find but accept help, the self-help and self-care movement that's been—for the lack of a better word—trending recently only justifies putting all of the blame on the individual, not the greater social systems affecting them.

    my illnesses won't magically go away because i take my meds regularly, because a large part of my symptoms are caused by the modern stresses of late capitalism and severe social inequality. i can see my therapist in my recommended appointments every other week, but it won't change the fact that some places won't hire me because i'm disabled. likewise, people can buy bath bombs from lush to help relieve the physical symptoms of stress in their bodies, but—like the video argues—it won't change how the stress got there in the first place. none of these ~solutions are specific to mindfulness, but they address the same issues that this video makes.

    the way i see it, mindfulness helps ease the burden of facing this reality every moment of waking life. i find it less as a disconnect from reality and more of a way to be completely present within it without completing losing myself.

37. I'm surprised you didn't mention yoga in connection with the sanitizing tendency the West has towards Eastern practices originally intended to bring spiritual awakening (look up Yoga Sutra).

    You should do a video on Stoicism, it was (is?) having a cultural moment. The ethical content seems to be less downplayed, and then I realized, surprise surprise, it's because it's a Western philosophy, as if Eastern ethics were any different other than being packaged with Eastern practices.

38. Simple mindfulness (that is free because I do it on my own) is changing my life. It's not about denying anything. That's the opposite of what it's about. And in this mad world, truly, all we have is ourselves. All we can control is ourselves. Although, it's important to bring all these realizations full-circle with action (of some sort). Avoidance is not helpful in almost any case. Mindfulness is not about being selfish, but self-care and self-love. And that's the only way we are going to actually overcome anything.

39. To see a problem is to be a problem 😒

40. Fuck off raid

41. So in other words, a new kind of meditation.

42. Dumb

43. Magnus Carlson or Muhammed Ali. Mindfulness or autobiographical mindset.
    Mindfulness reduces concept of self.
    Ego can achieve us achieve phenomenal things too. Muhammad Ali said he is the greatest, and ended up becoming one. Same goes will the inspirational stuff on YouTube.

    So in certain professions, autobiographical mindset is helpful. e.g. baseball player, coach, boxer, athletes, activism, orator of any kind!!

    Mostly where you throw a fist in air after you are done with task (or victory as they call it) .

    But profession or areas where you need to think more clearly or work on conceptually difficult problems, autobiographical mindset is not helpful. It can help you wake up at 5 a.m. to study, but not anything beyond that.
    Mindfulness or reduced concept of self will help in see things more clearly, connect things better, and help you arrive at conclusive ideas.
    In areas like mathematics, physics, computer science, chess, or even rope walking.
    Basically areas or sports where thinking clearly gives competitive advantage (doing extra 5 pushups doesn't need mindfulness; autobiographical mindset is a better tool here.)
    So how do we get the best of both world. Use autobiographical mindset to initiate the task, but try to have ego less mindset while actually doing it.

44. Mindfulness can be used to solve the issues you've discussed such as toxic environments. It's just most companies are too afraid to market it as such.

45. Savoring. Enhance the moment. Relish the happy ones;envision more.

46. Mindfulness doesn't have to be spiritual. It has proven benefits and is used in psychology. There will be self absorbed people who will take such practices and do them just because they're trendy but I don't think it's the cause for people being self-absorbed or jaded. It's like any medicine, that comes from tradition but we later discover why it actually works and use it's essence for our own good. It's no different just because it's used for mental health. Again, it doesn't need to be spiritual.

47. Wow.. the first time I've actually read the material from the video and then I find out he helped grow the tobacco industry…smh

48. So mindfulness=good
    Capitalism+mindfulness=bad

49. I'm not an expert on mindfulness by any means, but it seems kinda bass ackwards to me that all these mindfulness apps and the greater mindfulness movement's main focus is to improve identity & self when mindfulness is meant to eliminate the delusion of the self and thus make you more in touch with the world and other people.

    I do think mindfulness is a worth while pursuit and for anyone wanting to explore it at all I would recommend looking into Sam Harris, he has been featured in the Joe Rogan podcast and is a neuroscientist and philosopher, he studied under the Dalai Lama, so I think he is a pretty good source. He also has an app but unlike the other apps mentioned ^^ if you cant afford it you can just email him and he'll give you a free year subscription. He is seriously just doing it for the wellbeing of others. I have used it and I definitely recommend.

50. Alright alright alright

Comments are closed.