Corporate 'McMindfulness' Has Corrupted Buddhism Into a Tool of Capitalist Control
Source: Jay Caspian Kang. "“McMindfulness” and the Fate of Spirituality Under Capitalism | The New Yorker." February 10, 2026. www.newyorker.com
The Gist
The author argues that corporations have hijacked Buddhist mindfulness meditation, turning it from a practice meant to help people feel connected to others and work for social change into a way to make workers more productive and less likely to complain about bad working conditions. Instead of helping people see how they're connected to everyone else, corporate mindfulness just teaches people to manage their own stress better.
Conclusion
Modern corporate mindfulness practices have been stripped of their ethical and spiritual foundations, transforming them from tools of liberation and social connection into instruments of capitalist control that reinforce individualism and prevent structural change
Premises
- Traditional Buddhist mindfulness was designed to create understanding of 'interbeing' - the interconnectedness of all life forms and dissolution of the false separate self
- Corporate mindfulness programs deliberately strip away ethical teachings and focus solely on stress management and productivity enhancement
- McMindfulness serves corporate interests by making workers more compliant and productive rather than addressing structural workplace problems
- The medicalization and scientization of mindfulness gave it legitimacy among management while removing its transformative spiritual elements
- Modern mindfulness reinforces narcissistic individualism by focusing on personal optimization rather than collective responsibility and social engagement
- This corrupted version prevents people from questioning systemic issues by pathologizing stress as an individual problem requiring individual solutions
- True mindfulness should lead to social engagement and activism through recognition of our fundamental interconnectedness with others
Assumptions
- Authentic spiritual practices should lead to social engagement and concern for others' suffering
- Corporate adoption of spiritual practices is inherently corrupting due to profit motives
- Individual therapeutic benefits are insufficient if they don't address systemic causes of suffering
- Traditional Buddhist teachings contain essential ethical components that shouldn't be separated from meditation techniques
- Progressive social change requires community-based spiritual foundations rather than individualistic approaches