Edwin M. Schur

Before there was 'mindfulness!'

On page 45, Schur writes of self-help/awareness advocate authors, "[t]hese books invariably hedge their bets by both approving and disapproving of...degrees of every possible behavior pattern." This, however, is a lot of Schur's argument itself.

The first half of the book takes aim at some tendencies Schur identifies across new age programming and traditions ranging from TM to gestalt therapy to encounter movements and more. He spends pages erecting straw men of his opponents, having cherry-picked grand claims from their respective texts, before admitting that the practices may do individuals some good. Frustratingly, Schur prints himself a get-out-of-jail free card in the particular case of Buddhism, with a single sentence excluding "the disciplines of the East." Later, though, he paints a picture of Zen that betrays he hasn't really done the reading himself (one can do whatever one wishes, so long as one's not attached to it. Come on.)

The book comes into its own (not that it ever exactly "picks up") with a back half devoted to feminism and an honest look at therapeutic applications of "awareness." Though Schur once again equivocates with how a lot of these practices could inform a feminist movement, he gets much warmer when he's discussing that this is all good and well for middle and upper class women working on themselves, since as he puts it, "you can always pay someone to take care of the kids."

Further on, he makes early criticism of the awareness/mindfulness movement's cynical use by organizations to individualize and responsibilize social and political problems. Here's your book!

In a lot of ways, it feels like an early attempt at what Ron Purser frankly did better with McMindfulness, wherein cynical motivations were made clearer.… (altro)