Escaping the Self-Care Cult

I admit it, I bought into the self-care cult at first. How empowering the platitudes: change your thoughts, change your life, and how comforting to imagine we can sage and bathe ourselves into a state of wellbeing. With the right affirmations, you can activate abundance, and remove whatever energetic blocks are causing this existential angst. It’s an appealing narrative but those crystal collections won’t keep privatization at bay, or repair the crumbling social contract.

We’re living in uncertain times, navigating an ever-growing social divide, a gang of obtuse elites at the helm as we careen into a technological future that threatens to make many of us obsolete. Against this backdrop of government cuts to welfare, education, and health, we’re being sold the idea the issue lies within us, an epic con that says society isn’t flawed, you are. The glaring economic disparity, the social isolation of cities, the encroaching environmental catastrophe these are not the issues, rather, your response is. If life feels like a hamster wheel of work-rinse-repeat, you should think more positively, and consider cleansing those chakras.

It’s no coincidence that this new-age language and self-love revolution have made it to the mainstream. Lifestyle brands have managed to tap into the self-care movement, promoting the power of positivity and offering us appropriated objects for our…