Mindfulness, hygge and ikigai are great, but self-help needs wider view

Will meditation really solve our societal issues? Photo / AP

The latest trend or book may bring benefits, but to really help society, we need to look at the big questions, writes Terry Sarten.

As the modern western world is now running out of good ideas, we have turned to plundering other cultural values to see how we can extract some monetary value from them. A trend is just another bend in a road much travelled.

We have mindfulness, an adaptation of the ancient practice of meditation. Meditation in itself is a good thing but mindfulness has become big business.

Then there was hygge the Danish tradition of cosiness as a way to create contentment. This quickly became a money maker as people rushed to mine this cultural asset for all it was worth and sell us the idea of "bringing more hygge into your daily life".

The latest discovery is ikigai – a very old Japanese concept that roughly translates as a sense of purpose; "the things that make one's life worthwhile". This cultural perspective has served generations of Japanese people well. In the west it is getting attention as it appears to bring quality of life effects that can enhance longevity. This has brought with it the potential to "sell" what is a complex concept to the western world.

Mindfulness, hygge and ikigai all carry valuable ideas about the way we live our lives. All are based in very old cultural concepts that all can learn from. The fact that they have become monetised into products you can buy flies directly against the very values they represent.

They are sold to us as individual "solutions" to our problems. If we are stressed it is because there is something wrong with us rather than it being caused by the pressures of a capitalist model that is constantly pushing society ever harder to have more of everything. The righteous circle is closed by insisting we need to buy/pay for things that will help us cope while supplying more fuel to the money-go-round.

There is a need to look up from the self-help books, videos and classes and see ourselves as part of a wider social animal. A dysfunctional society cannot be fixed with truckloads of self-help books.

Another self-help book or blog may not be the solution. Photo / File

The contradiction is right then in the title – self-help. This is telling us that it is our fault – that we are personally failing in some way as individuals. This diverts attention from the much bigger elephant in the room called capitalism which requires constant feeding at one end and someone with a shovel to clean up the mess at the other end.

For a long time now the notion of GDP as a measure of a nation's "wealth" has been challenged because it counts outcomes at both ends of the elephant as being a good thing. The quality of life within a society was considered irrelevant to the sums.

Social cohesion is valuable but it is hard to fix a dollar value on it despite it being an essential buffer that prevents anarchy. Blaming people and labelling them as failures for struggling on low incomes is a copout.

For example, a family struggling because their income cannot feed them or pay the rent is not them failing as individuals – it is an effect of a low pay economy that creates profits for big business. This does not negate the responsibility of parents to care for their children but social change requires us to stand together and challenge the current economic model.

You cannot eat a self-help book.

•Terry Sarten (aka Tel) is a writer, musician and social worker