Western Buddhism as fetish
example ·
retold in 3 talks
Popularized transcendental meditation and Eastern spirituality function as ideological fetish: they let you fully participate in the capitalist game while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, your inner peace is what truly matters.
≤2000talks it is told in, per year2026
As told 3
“It enables you to fully participate in the capitalist game, while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, that you are well aware how worthless the spectacle is.”
“after our course you will be able to function even better on the market”
“One big ideological hamster today is in the West among enlightened capitalists, what I ironically call Western Buddhism.”
What it carries
one story, many jobs: the ideas this anecdote is deployed to argue, one tally mark per use (an idea page shows the same relation from the other end, as its shelf of stories)
Its cast and sources
populated by
Jakob Ammann1Colonel Francis Younghusband1Roger Ebert1Igor Bavčar1Wallace Stevens1William Golding1Jacques Le Goff1Philippe Pétain1
alongside works
Every retelling 3
Popularized transcendental meditation and Eastern spirituality function as ideological fetish: they let you fully participate in the capitalist game while sustaining the perception that you are not really in it, your inner peace is what truly matters., illustrating Western Buddhism,permissive cynical fetishism,fetish
New Age Buddhist/Taoist courses openly advertise that inner peace will make participants perform better on the market, their own marketing confirms that the spiritual practice serves capitalist efficiency rather than opposing it., illustrating Western Buddhism,fetishistic disavowal,ideology
Ultra-rich digital capitalists (Bill Gates type) adopt Dalai Lama-style oriental spiritualism as their 'hamster', a fetish that lets them disavow the brutal reality of what they actually do in the market., illustrating ideological hamster,Western Buddhism,permissive cynical fetishism,capitalism