Economics: What is Value? Why do you think Google, Facebook, etc. are investing so much in mindfulness retreats — Agustino
Yes, I've been to talk by the mindfulness coach for Google. You know what Buddhists think of corporate mindfulness? Its a massive threat to real meditative practice. Bikhu Bodhi the famous Buddhist translator is leading a movement for more socially active Buddhism. Mindfulness can be improperly used as sedative to make people more complacent to the unjust status quo and to detach and thus enable continued corrupt social structures. I'm not an activist, politics is a cheif example of a corrupt structure. But I do think spirtual practice exists to liberate us from the world not be more productive in it.
The problem with rich patronizing the arts is then only the art that doesn't challenge the rich becomes funded. You see this is in church today, pastors cater to getting people in the pews and to give pledges. They are obsessed about attracting young families and encourage growth. They forget the role of the church is not to pad it's membership rolls and it's budget but witness to the Word of God even if it's only to a parish of ten old people.
Plotinus says in the first ennead
"So, we may justly say, a Soul becomes ugly- by something foisted upon it, by sinking itself into the alien, by a fall, a descent into body, into Matter. The dishonour of the Soul is in its ceasing to be clean and apart. Gold is degraded when it is mixed with earthy particles; if these be worked out, the gold is left and is beautiful, isolated from all that is foreign, gold with gold alone. And so the Soul; let it be but cleared of the desires that come by its too intimate converse with the body, emancipated from all the passions, purged of all that embodiment has thrust upon it, withdrawn, a solitary, to itself again- in that moment the ugliness that came only from the alien is stripped away."
Our souls loose their purity and become ugly by association with worldly pursuits. As Jesus says you can't serve two masters.