Facing the daily, ever-unsettling and shocking news, we try to understand the changes and make sense of them.
The latest scientistic studies in brain research and the new findings about the different functions of the two hemispheres are a way to get closer to a kind of understanding the disturbing social changes, the alarming developments in politics and the destructive behavior within them.
Iain McGilchrist, a Scottish neuroscience researcher, psychiatrist and philosopher, has explained the functions of our brain hemispheres and examined them in extensive studies.
His brilliant talks and interviews (he is also a literary scholar) and his almost 3000 pages book „The Matter with Things“ reveal a staggering evidence and a profound understanding of how we function in the world and our social and economic behaviour.
McGilchrist worked out how our divided brain, which actually functions in a balanced and harmonious way, has been getting more and more out of balance for several hundred years: we are becoming more and more dominated by the left hemisphere. This has enormous destructive effects on our thinking and actions, as we will see below.
But Iain McGilchrist also points to ways in which we can find our natural balance again.
It is important to emphasize that both hemispheres play a role in virtually every human activity and in all mental processes and states. From language to emotions, movement, thinking, imagination, creativity and logic – all of this is processed by the function of both hemispheres – ideally in a balanced way. This allows us to describe and explain brain activity – although consciousness itself is of course much more than just this interaction.
But what exactly does left hemisphere dominance mean and how did it come about?
First, we need to understand the different functions of the two hemispheres, how they shape the way we perceive the world – and how they are connected and work together.
Two types of Attention
The different types of attention of the two hemispheres arose for an evolutionarily important reason. Every living being has to solve this task: How can I find food and not get eaten myself?
This doesn’t sound difficult at first, but: the creature must be able to target something, follow it with its eyes and grasp it very precisely. To do this, it must have a very narrow, focused attention. But if that were the only type of attention, it would not survive long. If a bird were only focused on foraging, it would not notice the bird of prey above it or the cat in the bushes. And if it were only concerned with vigilance, it would not be able to find its nest and feed its offspring. So two types of attention are required, and these types of attention are so different that they can only be created by two areas of the brain that complement each other in their work.
The left hemisphere has a very narrow focus, which is directed at details in order to see them very precisely. It fixates on them and grasps them (and the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body and, for example, the right hand, which most of us use to grasp and work).
The right hemisphere, on the other hand, has a broad, open, sustained alert attention, without a specific focus, restrictive preferences or filters.
Presence and Representation
The world of the left hemisphere is, if you will, a map, a scheme, a diagram, a theory or a representation – something two-dimensional. We have a world here that consists of things that function mechanically, statically, analytically, abstractly and in isolation and usefully. And another world, that of the right hemisphere, which is fluid, complex and alive, i.e. constantly changing, participating, transforming, always emerging. A world of presence. And both worlds have their value.
You may begin to see, how a clearly left-hemisphere dominated behaviour and its effects on our world might look like:
It is then all about treating the world as something to be grasped, manipulated, used and controlled, something over which we exercise power – without the right brain’s view of the whole, the interconnectedness of everything, without its ability to understand it more deeply and without having sufficient access to the comprehensive consequences of our manipulations.
The left brain is overconfident, tends to think in black and white terms and jumps to conclusions. Since it serves the animal instincts within us, it needs these qualities if it is to be successful in the fight for survival.
The left brain pays close attention to detail, sorts things and organizes people into useful categories, a great ability as long as it does not become unbalanced and block the right hemisphere’s ability to see the connections and the whole “gestalt”, abilities through which we have access to what we value most: connection, friendship, love; creativity, art, music and poetry; Joy of life – all that enables a meaningful living.
The right hemisphere is better at understanding the world in all its complexity; it tends to think both-and; it is reflective, intuitive, organic, implicit, empathetic, compassionate and caring.
The right hemisphere is better at understanding the world in all its complexity; is inclined to Both-And thinking; it is reflective, intuitive, organic, implicit, empathetic, there is compassion and care.
We can easily see how so many crises of our world today are the result of left-brain dominance: power-oriented politics, profit-maximizing economics, exploitation of the environment and all life for profit – and the missing ability of self-reflection or insight to pause.
Unfortunately, we now believe that if we just had a little bit more power (which is the raison d’etre of the left hemisphere: to grasp, to get) — if only we could do a bit more manipulation — we would solve the Problems of our time. But at the same time, we’re making an unholy mess of the world in so many respects. We’re destroying nature, we’re destroying humanity. We’re certainly destroying this civilisation. I’d say we’re taking a sledgehammer to it. And so, this is a very sad outcome for this know-it-all left hemisphere.“ Ian McGilchrist
So the solution becomes part of the problem! “We are already living in a simulation. Our focus is on safety, power, and control, dominion – yet we’ve never felt so disconnected. If the brains left hemisphere could invent a world, it would surely look a lot like this.”
Einstein said the rational mind is a faithful servant, but the intuitive mind is a precious gift. And we live in a world that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift. While we need both hemispheres, the right hemisphere should be the master and the left its servant, as McGilchrist writes in his book: “The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.”
How did we end up here?
There are several reasons why the left hemisphere has become more dominant. One simple reason is that it is the one that makes us rich. It is the one we use to grab and get, rule and overpower. Technology is a dominant force in our world and much of it is about dominating processes and nature. Together with science, it is the driving force of our time. It has enabled us to achieve such great innovations and so much convenience, but we also use it without considering the overall impact.
Our technological world requires a disproportionate use of the left brain by the digitized, “representational” world. The right brain has much less opportunity to connect and form empathetic relationships in the analog, presence world.
This digitalized environment, especially media technology, besides its great achievements, has also had a destructive effect on collective and individual meaning-making. The scale at which this is taking place is unprecedented in the history of the world.
And science has mostly been reduced to analytical science – that is, it breaks things down into their component parts and studies only what can be measured, neglecting the whole, the shape, the living organism or the entire ecosystem, which cannot be measured and defined as a whole.
The study of life itself is not possible by cutting living things into pieces to study them. By that we only get the quantifiable part of the research.
The shift towards left hemisphere dominance is reinforced by a growing move away from activities that would allow access to right hemisphere experience, be it spending time in nature, leisure, religious rituals, experiencing or creating art, space for creativity. These activities do not need limited focus or control or manipulation. Instead, they would allow for unfolding, opening up, such as in experiencing nature – and that is the domain of the right hemisphere. The art and way of perceiving the right hemisphere is needed to feel awe at the beauty of nature or art such as poetry, or to experience oneself connected, and it is essential for creativity.
Information is so central in our time – wisdom and meaning play a lesser role. The overemphasis on information, the abstraction of real things, leads to living on the map, the re-presentation of the real world: the triumph of theory over embodied experience.
Another trend that takes us in the direction of the left hemisphere worldview is the bureaucratization of society: it leads to people being sorted and organized like things, in neatly ordered categories, reduced to their ability to work and their usefulness.
And of course the focus on the utility of animals and nature as a whole: We overfish the seas, we overbreed and torture animals to maximize our profits. We do this without considering the impact on the entire ecosystem or the earth, we lose respect and compassion for living beings.
Our capitalist economy does not value nature, but aims for profit. What is the value of a fish that lives and stays in the sea? We do not know? But we know its price when it is caught, killed and sold. This attitude has a huge impact on life on earth.
We need a less dominant, more humble and more participatory place in the world. This would allow us to experience a sense of awe and wonder at the beauty of this earth, and bring compassion into our relationships with other people and living beings.
Iain McGilchrist provides a lot of scientific evidence that the right brain (in harmonious interaction with the left) gives us access to our values, such as truth, life, flow and everything that is so valuable to us. Right-brain thinking also enables us to identify the type of thinking in the left brain that prevents us from directly experiencing the valuable qualities. The left brain is so convinced of its way that it cannot think about itself – it needs the right hemisphere for that.
Of course, our consciousness – this inexplicable, incomprehensible dimension – cannot be explained or deduced by brain activity alone: this phenomenon is beyond our understanding. These qualities can also be experienced in meditation, such as mindfulness and compassion meditation. Both soothe and calm us and our experience enables us to see ourselves as a living presence.
In our podcast episode, we wanted to not only describe these qualities, but also make them tangible. Our good friend Dr. Harry Siegel reads a beautiful poem by David Weiss that wonderfully confuses our left-brained thinking and opens us up to the world of experience.