24AR29-36

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AR 29:36 - "Mindfulness" can make your mental-health even worse

In this issue:

FREEDOM OF SPEECH - Why major media outlets "coalesce around the same taboos"

GLOBAL RELIGIOSITY - Where is the most religious place in the world?

MEDITATION - Is it ethical to "use mindfulness in clinical practice without mentioning its adverse effects?"

Apologia Report 29:36 (1,677)
September 24, 2024

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"Why the Media Moves in Unison" by Yascha Mounk (Substack, Aug 22 '24) -- begins: "For much of the pandemic, mainstream publications confidently rejected the possibility that an inadvertent lab leak may stand at the origin of Covid. The New York Times and The Washington Post, The Guardian and Vox all referred to this notion as a 'conspiracy theory.' Fact-checkers at Politifact and other leading outfits claimed that the idea had definitively been 'debunked.' Renowned scientists were banned from Facebook and YouTube for dissenting from the approved line.

   "Then, in the course of a few weeks, the theory suddenly stopped being taboo. The evidence that there was reason to take the theory seriously had gradually accumulated on social media. Finally, in January 2021, a major article in New York Magazine marshaled some of the strongest evidence for the theory. Though it did not contain much new information, serious consideration of the topic started to appear in all the most prestigious outlets over the following days and weeks. Before long, the theory was routinely being described as a plausible, and perhaps even likely, explanation for the start of the pandemic.

   "The media's change in how it covered the origins of the pandemic is one of the most extreme examples of groupthink in recent history. But it is far from the only case in which journalistic coverage of an important topic has radically shifted over the course of a stunningly brief span of time. 

   "Even once voters had grown deeply concerned about Joe Biden's mental acuity, mainstream journalists hesitated to write about the topic. 

   "Even once evidence about the harmful side effects of cross-sex hormones administered to teenagers had mounted, mainstream journalists insisted that the science on the topic had long ago been settled. And even once it was becoming very clear that prolonged school closures were having a devastating effect on learning outcomes, mainstream journalists dismissed and ridiculed those who expressed concerns. Only long after the evidence which warranted a change of tune had started to accumulate did all three taboos crumble, seemingly from one day to the next.

   "These kinds of cases are a big part of the reason why trust in the media has fallen so dramatically."

   Mounk believes he has it all figured out. It's simple - that is, "it doesn't take some grand conspiracy ... to explain why the media coalesce around the same taboos. The real reason is rather more prosaic. Writers care about being read. They care about building a following. They care about making money. But more than any of these, they care about not being cast out of their social milieu. ...

   "The reason for the striking homogeneity in the opinions expressed in the mainstream press at any one time, and the seemingly choreographed manner in which these can suddenly change is not a conspiracy. It is, to put the phenomenon in the simplest terms, the desire of many journalists not to face awkward questions when they attend their next dinner party."

   To reinforce this analysis, Mounk seeks to "explain why the nature of the social taboos that are binding on society can shift in such rapid - and seemingly unpredictable - fashion. To solve that puzzle, we need to turn to the work of [Duke University professor] Timur Kuran, a Turkish-American economist who, back in the late 1980s, set out to explain the origins of political revolutions. ...

   "The key to understanding why revolutions tend to come as such a surprise, Kuran argues, lies in the gulf between the views people privately hold and the views they are willing to express publicly." <www.tinyurl.com/3pwuztju>

Then again, don't forget what the "Twitter Files" <www.tinyurl.com/hkda8z6f> discoveries revealed. "Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and other lawmakers obtained non-public documents that reveal how CISA (Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) - initially intended to focus on protecting critical infrastructure and countering cybersecurity threats - allegedly began working closely with the federal government on domestic surveillance and operations to censor parties on social media. 

   "Former President Trump created the agency after signing into law the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Act of 2018. However, in the years since its creation, the subcommittee found that by 2020, CISA began 'routinely' colluding with Big Tech and government-funded third parties by reporting social media posts that allegedly spread 'disinformation' - further corroborating previous reports from Twitter Files journalists Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and others." "Biden Administration 'Colluded' with Big Tech to Censor Americans, House Lawmakers Report Says" by  Brandon Drey (DailyWire, Jun 26 '23) <www.tinyurl.com/mu28ywc8>

   More recently, Tucker Carlson interviewed former State Department official Mike Benz (Executive Director, Foundation for Freedom Online) <www.tinyurl.com/muynmxa4> on Aug 29 '24. They discuss what has happened since the "Twitter Files" and how the government has continued to encroach. It's quite disturbing. <www.tinyurl.com/M-Benz-TCN>

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GLOBAL RELIGIOSITY

"Map Shows Most Religious Countries in the World" (Newsweek, Aug 26 '24) -- Newsweek has created an interactive map of "the most religious countries in the world," based largely on data <www.tinyurl.com/ykdrka2h> compiled in 2023 by the Pew Research Center.

   "Of the countries included in the surveys, Indonesia ranked first, with 98 percent of respondents saying religion was very important in their lives..

   "Indonesia is one of the world's largest Muslim-majority nations - approximately 87 percent of Indonesia's population adheres to Islam. The Southeast Asian country is also home to smaller groups of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucians..

   "Indonesia was followed by Senegal, Pakistan, Mali, and Tanzania.

   "The Sub-Saharan Africa region was one of the most religious, with more than 80 percent of citizens in well over a dozen nations reporting that religion played an important role in their lives..

   "According to Pew's findings, East Asia and Western Europe were among the least religious parts of the world.

   "Specifically, less than 10 percent of Japanese respondents said religion was very important to their lives. Respondents in Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea were similarly unlikely to say religion was important to them."

   "Around 45 percent of Americans said they prayed daily." In August, Newsweek also created an interactive map of the most religious states in the US. <www.tinyurl.com/2z3nt632>

   "Alabama topped that list, followed by Virginia. Towards the other end of the spectrum were Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont." <www.tinyurl.com/5bc52wk5>

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MEDITATION

In "Meditation Can Be Harmful - and Can Even Make Mental Health Problems Worse," Miguel Farias (PsyPost, Jul 19 '24) explains: "Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you're sensing, thinking and feeling in the present moment. ...

   A 2022 study in Psychotherapy Research, <www.tinyurl.com/3x54cb4h> "using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10% of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.

   "According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, <www.tinyurl.com/2buwzk4m> the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalisation, and fear or terror.

   "Research also found that adverse effects can happen to people without previous mental health problems, to those who have only had a moderate exposure to meditation and they can lead to long-lasting symptoms. ...

   "Professor of management and ordained Buddhist teacher Ronald Purser wrote in his 2023 book McMindfulness <www.tinyurl.com/25cxyjx7> that mindfulness has become a kind of 'capitalist spirituality'. In the US alone, meditation is worth US$2.2 billion (£1.7 billion). And the senior figures in the mindfulness industry should be aware of the problems with meditation. Jon Kabat-Zinn, a key figure behind the mindfulness movement, admitted in a 2017 interview with the Guardian that '90% of the research [into the positive impacts] is subpar'."

   Farias (Associate Professor, Experimental Psychology, Coventry University), reports that "there was little media coverage in 2022 of the most expensive study in the history of meditation science <www.tinyurl.com/ycxhb7pw> (over US$8 million funded by research charity the Wellcome Trust). The study tested more than 8,000 children (aged 11-14) across 84 schools in the UK from 2016 to 2018. Its results showed that mindfulness failed to improve the mental wellbeing of children compared to a control group, and may even have had detrimental effects on those who were at risk of mental health problems.

   "Is it ethical to sell mindfulness apps, teach people meditation classes, or even use mindfulness in clinical practice without mentioning its adverse effects? Given the evidence of how varied and common these effects are, the answer should be no."

   Nearing his conclusion, Farias summarizes: "There is a wider problem in that meditation deals with unusual states of consciousness and we don't have psychological theories of mind to help us understand these states.

   "For now, if meditation is to be used as a wellbeing or therapeutic tool, the public needs to be informed about its potential for harm." <www.tinyurl.com/2bd84emd>

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