Intro

In this video, we will once again delve into the philosophy of the somewhat scathing Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han. We’ll consider a momentary pause, this time in the most mundane duty of any human organism - eating. McDonald’s for a quick bite with a phone. Lunch with a laptop, dinner with youtube. When was actually the last time you remembered the taste of your food? The texture, the smell or the sounds of the surroundings. Do you remember such details? Or do they escape between the next reel or episode on Netflix?

I can’t eat alone

As I mentioned at the beginning, we will return to The Burnout Society by Byung-Chul Han. Han does not directly refer to food itself, but he does address the issue of distraction. So let’s listen to his words:

Multitasking is commonplace among wild animals. It is an attentive technique indispensable for survival in the wilderness. An animal busy with eating must also attend to other tasks. For example, it must hold rivals away from its prey. It must constantly be on the lookout, lest it be eaten while eating. At the same time, it must guard its young and keep an eye on its sexual partner. In the wild, the animal is forced to divide its attention between various activities. That is why animals are incapable of contemplative immersion—either they are eating or they are copulating. The animal cannot immerse itself contemplatively in what it is facing [Gegenüber] because it must also process background events.

– Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society [p.13]

In this admittedly cruel passage, as humans we revert back to a state of animalization. Our distracted attention doesn’t allow us to focus any longer on something boring, which is precisely what food is. De facto nothing is happening, so the current state of hypervigilance prevents deeper contemplation and any experience of the meal, e.g. taste, surroundings or the most ordinary silence.

In turn, Han quotes Nietzsche:

One must learn “not to react immediately to a stimulus, but instead to take control of the inhibiting, excluding instincts.” By the same token, “every characteristic absence of spirituality [Ungeistigkeit], every piece of common vulgarity, is due to an inability to resist a stimulus”1—the inability to set a no in opposition. Reacting immediately, yielding to every impulse, already amounts to illness and represents a symptom of exhaustion.

– Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society [p.21]

Constantly reaching for the phone because of the stimulus of a notification sound, a vibration or a flashing LED on the screen also makes it impossible to focus on the present moment, but facilitates total surrender to capitalist algorithms. The vita contemplativa, or the ability to experience the state of the beautiful and wonderful, which does not pass away and does not change, disappears completely. But what am I clinging to? After all, all kinds of gurus have said that one can be mindfulness and everything will be fine. Life will work out and I will be productive, right? Right?

McMindfulness

Well, not exactly. The term McMindfulness was coined by Miles Neale. It was later developed by Roland Purser in his article Beyond McMindfulness and in his book McMindfulness - How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. Purser wanted to describe with this phrase the detachment of the philosophy of being mindfulness from its Buddhist roots. This has made it a tool in the hands of the military, corporations and schools to deal with stress and increase productivity. The neoliberal philosophy of mindfulness is causing a loop in self-help therapy. The current problems of using vita contemplativa are not solved by modern mindfulness, as it only helps to adapt to the same conditions that caused people’s problems. True mindfulness should be critical of the system, not reduced to a relaxation technique. According to Purser’s words:

Mindfulness advocates, perhaps unwittingly, are providing support for the status quo. Rather than discussing how attention is monetized and manipulated by corporations such as Google, Facebook, Twitter and Apple, they locate the crisis in our minds.

–Ronald E. Purser, McMindfulness [p.8]

As you can see, the current system is not being questioned, rather, stress has been privatized, as it is ultimately something wrong with us, not the system. After all, the most important goal of any corporation is to take a deep breath and…. meeting those quarterly targets.
Because of this, we are being pulled away again from spending a moment in the here and now and enjoying a meal. In addition, philosophies are ripped away from true spirituality and sold as a billion-dollar franchise. As you can see, even spirituality can be priced.

Gestalt - to be here and now

One possible solution besides true mindfulness may also be gestalt philosophy (yes, I consider gestalt as an element of philosophy, and an inseparable part of psychology and a therapeutic current). Gestalt itself emphasizes the key element of being here and now and looking at people not as individual elements, but as a whole. The importance of not hiding in the past or future is also important. Real change begins through authentic contact with one’s own experience. An experience that has not passed away with the next reel or meme.
Therefore, the simplest is to focus on daily activities. This allows you to focus on the taste, texture or smell of the food. It allows you to get to know yourself better by being aware of what is happening holistically. Eating mindfully then becomes a political act. That bug from Elliot that sends the message that it’s time to slow down and eat mindfully.
The practice of presence is not just a relaxation technique like neoliberal mindfulness, but a conscious way of living in opposition to social pressures and what is considered optimal.

Outro

Let’s return to standard practice. Let’s savor a bite of a sandwich or salad. Let’s taste that warm tea. Let’s eat deliciously in detachment from constant running. Let’s eat quietly in a break from constant optimization.
Let’s reclaim the taste of now.

Bibliography

These particular books affected the overall shape of the article

  • Byung-Chul Han - The Burnout Society
    This book provides the essay’s core diagnosis. Han’s concept of the hyper-attentive ‘achievement-subject’ explains why we regress to an animalistic, distracted state while eating, unable to resist stimuli and incapable of the “contemplative immersion” a simple meal should offer.
  • Ronald E. Purser - McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality
    Purser’s work is essential for understanding the essay’s critique of false solutions. It exposes how commercialized “McMindfulness” detaches presence from its ethical roots, turning it into another tool for self-optimization. This book explains why simply “being mindful” at the dinner table fails to challenge the capitalist “attention economy” that caused the distraction in the first place.