We all know by now that Russian intelligence services have tried to influence opinions in Western democracies. In the U.S., the simplified story is that the Kremlin wanted Donald Trump to win, as Vladimir Putin publicly stated. However, the bigger picture is that Russia benefits from the United States being divided and distracted. The same applies to Europe, which is why Russia supported the Brexit movement.
Russian interference came in many forms. It wasn’t just pro-Trump; they played both sides, promoting groups like “Black Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter,” as well as pro-Trump groups and “resisters.” Their broader goal was to create distrust across various cultural spheres, including race, immigration, law and order, and health.
One surprising element was the Russian setup of a Facebook page called “Mindful Being.” According to AdAge, more than 290,000 accounts followed at least one of these pages, created between March 2017 and May 2018. The most followed pages were “Aztlan Warriors,” “Black Elevation,” “Mindful Being,” and “Resisters,” while others had fewer followers.
The Kremlin effectively weaponized mindfulness. The fake pages generated subtle content to seem genuine and garner likes. Most content on “Mindful Being” was harmless, but it possibly laid the groundwork for more divisive material before being taken down. Drawing people in with innocuous, inspirational content and then shifting to posts designed to foster distrust in the media and science was their tactic.
There’s a connection to my blog on fake Buddha quotes. The critical skills needed to determine if a quote is genuine or modern can help discern whether a Facebook meme is manipulative. I discuss this in my book, “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Buddha,” which delves into the practice of verifying quotes and, by extension, memes and news stories.
I came across your site and article on “weaponized mindfulness” while exploring the neuroscience of meditation. There’s plenty of material on this, but I noticed the vague use of terms like “mindfulness,” “altruism,” and “kindness” in connection with science. This vagueness has never bothered me until recent efforts to quantify these complex categories as rigorous science. As someone trained in science, I find the attempt to turn metaphysical concepts into quantitative ones problematic.
Research often aims to connect meditation and mindfulness with measurable factors like physiological responses, using tools like fMRI or surface electrodes. While these studies are usually well-intentioned, aiming to treat mental health issues or conditions like ADHD, there’s a simplistic belief that quantifiable measures can fully capture complex human experiences.
The problem arises when abstract concepts are mapped to numerical scales, leading to superficial thinking. Ranking human traits like intelligence, kindness, or aggression quantitatively can misrepresent their true nature. This trend risks reducing deep, principled debates to simplistic empiricism, influenced by the encroachment of computer science into all fields.
This kind of thinking can lead to harmful cultural engineering, more concerning than political manipulations. I thought of “weaponized mindfulness” in extreme scenarios, like a pilot being trained to be mindful during a bombing raid. Could military institutions fund research to make pilots more mindful while suppressing their emotional responses to human suffering? This is an unsettling but plausible extension of “weaponized mindfulness.”
Increased use of meditation apps, coupled with pervasive surveillance and social scoring systems like China’s, raises more concerns. These systems reward and punish based on detailed surveillance of human behavior, including app usage. Such measures could manipulate social behavior significantly.
I found your article by searching “weaponized mindfulness” on Google. While I don’t agree that Russian interference alone led to Trump’s election, your insights were valuable. Looking ahead, we might face new challenges, such as politically motivated blame games involving other countries or “mindfulness meditation spam robots.”
Best regards,
Reiner