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Two halves of the brain each see the world differently — and Iain McGilchrist believes we have become addicted to the wrong one. This lecture from Academy of Ideas introduces his warning about modern civilization. The left hemisphere grasps, manipulates, and sees a narrow, useful piece of the world; the right sees the whole. Screens, bureaucracy, and a reductionist science have trained us into left-hemisphere dominance — and the price is rising narcissism, power-seeking, and a loss of touch with reality. The sorcerer’s apprentice controls what he no longer comprehends.
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It seems to me that we face very grave crises indeed and that, if we are to survive, we need not just a few new measures, but a complete change of heart and mind.
There seems to be a sickness that has spread throughout society, and it has infected most
people with a mindset that is not suitable for individual or social flourishing.
In this video, we explore a fascinating hypothesis, put forth by the psychiatrist and neuroscience
researcher Ian McGilchrist, that can help account for the sickness of the modern age.
This hypothesis suggests that most people rely too heavily on one side of the brain,
which is leading to a peculiar worldview and a pathological way of being that is characterized
by stubbornness, a lack of empathy, a desire for power, and an overall disconnection from reality.
Brains and minds are living, constantly adapting, interconnected systems, writes McGilchrist,
and they are conscious. A brain disease or mental illness, then, is a change in a person’s whole
way of being in the world. To understand the mental pathology that has
infected society we must begin with a basic understanding of the structure of the human
brain, or specifically its bipartite nature. The word bipartite means involving or made
up of two entities. The human brain is bipartite as it is divided
into two asymmetrical hemispheres, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere. This
Asymmetrical division is not unique to humans, but is found in every neuronal system of every
known creature stretching back to the beginning of evolutionary history.
Why is this?
What purpose does it serve?
Or as McGilchrist asks, Why are the two cerebral hemispheres asymmetrical?
Do they really differ in any important sense?
If so, in what way?
Common in popular culture is the idea that the two hemispheres differ in what they do.
For example, it is often said that the left hemisphere is the locus of logic, analytic
thought, language, and reason, while the right hemisphere is the locus of emotions, creativity,
intuition, and artistic ability.
But as McGilchrist notes,
Just about everything that is said about the hemispheres in Pop’s Psychology is wrong,
because it rests on beliefs about what the hemispheres do, not about how they approach
it.
Both hemispheres play a role in virtually every human activity and in all mental processes
and states. From language to emotion, movement, thought, imagination, creativity, logic, and
reason, all these activities are mediated by the operation of both hemispheres. Or as
McGilchrist writes, we will never learn anything about hemisphere differences if we wait for
a situation in which one hemisphere is 100% responsible for whatever it is, and the other
contributes nothing. It is always a matter of degree, a matter of asymmetry. To understand
the primary difference between the two hemispheres, it is helpful to examine a fundamental problem
that all creatures face in the struggle to survive. We must eat, while also protecting
ourselves from being eaten. In his book The Matter with Things, McGilchrist provides the
example of a bird to show how the bipartite nature of the brain helps to solve this fundamental
problem of survival. When a bird is searching for food, it must deploy a narrow, focused and
precise attention to find and attack the worms and bugs it eats. But if a bird only deployed
this narrow attention its survival fitness would be low, as every time it focused on finding food
it would be oblivious to its surroundings and easy prey for predators. To solve this problem
a bird simultaneously deploys a more open, broad, and sustained attention to monitor
its surroundings and to be on the lookout for potential threats. The simultaneous deployment
of two types of attention was made possible by the evolution of the two brain hemispheres.
Or as McGilchrist writes, How on earth can you dispose your consciousness towards the
world in two conflicting ways at once? The answer is the evolution of two neuronal masses,
separate enough to function independently, but connected enough to work in concert with
one another, each capable of sustaining consciousness on its own.
In other words, a bipartite brain.
In the bipartite brain, the left hemisphere specializes in the narrow and precisely focused
attention that is necessary to obtain the resources needed to survive.
But the utility of the left hemisphere’s attention extends beyond its ability to help
us attain resources. In a more general sense, we use this type of attention to focus in on specific
elements of our environment in order to manipulate and control them in the service of a wide variety
of ends. The right hemisphere, on the other hand, specializes in the broad, open, and sustained form
of attention that keeps us on alert to potential threats. This form of attention, however, is also
use to help us comprehend the world in its vast complexity, and to integrate diverse
elements of our experience into a cohesive whole. Together, these two hemispheres strike
a balance between the need to control and manipulate our environment and the need to
understand it. Or as McGilchrist explains,
In humans, the left hemisphere is designed for grasping, controls the right hand with
which we grasp, and helps us manipulate rather than understand the world.
It sees little, but what it does see seems clear.
It is confident, tends to be black and white in its judgments, and jumps to conclusions.
Since it is serving the predator in us, it has to if it is to succeed.
It sees a linear relationship between the doer and the done to, between arrow and target.
By contrast, the wide-open, vigilant, sustained attention of the right hemisphere, without
preconception as to what it may find, is designed to look out for all the rest, whatever else
might be going on in the world while we are busy grasping.
Its purpose is to help us understand rather than manipulate the world, to see the whole
and how we relate to it.
It is more exploratory, less certain.
It is more interested in making discriminations in shades of meaning.
We do not notice the discrepancy between the two modes of attending to the world that are
provided by the left and right hemispheres.
We have evolved so that both forms of attention can be deployed simultaneously while our experience
appears as a unified gestalt.
If in everyday life, writes McGilchrist, we were aware of the discrepancies in the view
or take on the world each hemisphere offers, it would render the immediate business of
survival impracticable. For this reason, nature has taken care that these discrepancies should
not be part of our everyday awareness. When both hemispheres work in harmony we function
at optimal capacity. Sometimes, however, one of the hemispheres dominates and crowds out
the contribution of the other. This may be the result of a physical injury to one of
hemispheres, such as occurs following a stroke. But physical changes to the brain are not necessary
to effectuate an over-reliance on one hemisphere. McGilchrist provides the analogy of using a radio
to help elucidate how non-physical processes can result in one hemisphere dominating.
Let’s say we buy a radio and at first we listen to a wide variety of stations across the spectrum.
With time we increasingly tune into only one station and eventually we never turn the dial
to explore what else is on. This does not imply that there is anything wrong with the physical
components of the radio, we just never change the station. So it is with the brain. Our lifestyle,
habits, and technological, cultural, and social trends can lead to a situation where we
increasingly tune into one of the hemispheres and become overly reliant on its mode of attentional
deployment. This situation can become so habitual that we don’t even realize that our experience is
largely sculpted by one half of the brain and that we are ignoring the potential contributions of the
other hemisphere. McGilchrist suggests that in the modern day it is the left hemisphere that has
come to dominate the experience of most people. We are a population of men and women who habitually
rely on the narrow and precise form of attention that is the forte of the left hemisphere and
this is exerting a formative influence on the type of people we become. For how we attend
to the world is a prime shaper of the way we experience it and our experience in turn
shapes our character. Relying on one side of the brain produces a different type of
personality than the personality that would arise if we were to allow the optimal deployment
of both hemispheres. Or as McGilchrist puts it, things change according to the stance we adopt
towards them, the type of attention we pay to them, the disposition we hold in relation to them.
This is important because the most fundamental difference between the hemispheres lies in the
type of attention they give to the world. What can account for this shift toward the left hemisphere’s
take on the world. Or as McGilchrist asks, why has one particular model or one hemisphere’s take
on the world come to dominate us so badly that we hardly notice its pervasiveness? This shift
towards a left hemisphere dominated experience can be attributed to several key factors.
Firstly, there is the rise of the reductive materialist paradigm of modern science.
Reductionism, in the words of McGilchrist, assumes that the only way to understand the nature of anything we experience is by looking at the parts of which it appears to be made, and building up from there.
While materialism is a philosophical position that asserts that matter is the sole, primary, and fundamental component of reality,
in the reductive materialist paradigm, the world, and everything in it, is made from tiny parts of matter,
and the purpose of science is to break down these larger holes to their constituent material parts
in order to understand how these mechanisms operate and how we can manipulate them.
Although many people are unfamiliar with the term reductive materialism,
the assumptions embedded within this paradigm shape contemporary worldviews.
This idea that all phenomena can be reduced to physical mechanisms has become a cornerstone of
modern zeitgeist, influencing what people believe and how they interact with the world around them.
And this paradigm, which has dominated mainstream science for over a century,
is tailor-made to the strengths of the left hemisphere. Or as McGilchrist explains,
Science is heavily dependent on the exercise of what the left hemisphere offers. Science’s
successes, in explaining how the world works and in helping us to control and manipulate that world
to the extraordinary degree to which we now do, are unquestionable and are dependent on precisely
those specific capacities which the left hemisphere contributes, capacities of analysis
and for identifying mechanisms. Modern technology is another factor making us reliant on the left
hemisphere. As a species we have become so entwined with our technologies that most people
spend more time using technology than not. Most of these technologies, but especially computers,
smartphones, and now virtual reality devices, require the narrow and precise attention of the
left hemisphere and inhibit the broad, sustained, and open attention of the right hemisphere.
Furthermore, modern technology is built for the primary purpose of manipulating and controlling
the environment, goals that align with the motivations of the left hemisphere. Or as
McGilchrist explains, technology is one expression of the desire for power and control over the
world, which is of course the primary motivation of the left hemisphere, in which it repudiates
the right hemisphere, on which we rely for our sense of depth in every sense of the word.
Another trend pushing us in the direction of the left hemisphere’s take on the world
is the bureaucratization of society. As the state has grown in size, power, and scope,
its bureaucratic tentacles have infiltrated all areas of society. Opportunities for spontaneity
have declined, and human life is now increasingly patterned by the need to check the boxes and
follow the rules and procedures of some government bureaucracy. An individual dominated by the left
Hemisphere’s take on the world, will feel right at home in a world where following rules
and procedures is the norm, for as McGilchrist explains, the Left Hemisphere’s forte, its
strong suit is following familiar procedures.
The shift towards Left Hemisphere dominance is further exacerbated by a widespread move
away from activities which promote the Right Hemisphere’s way of attending to the world,
be it time spent in nature, religious practices, appreciating art, or creative problem-solving.
These activities are not defined by a need to narrow down our focus to manipulate or
control our environment, but instead permit the emergence of the broad and open attention
of the right hemisphere. It is the right hemisphere’s attention which is needed to absorb the beauty
of nature, appreciate the meaning implicit in a great work of art. It is crucial in the
attempt to connect to the transcendent other of religion, and it is essential in the process
of a creative breakthrough. Or as McGilchrist explains,
Certain kinds of mind-wandering are creative. Narrow attention hampers creativity. Only
turning off the spotlight of left hemisphere attention enables the more complex and diffuse
arrays of neurons in the right hemisphere to work on solving the problem. These activities
that rely on the power of the right hemisphere have been crowded out by pursuits mediated by
technology and structured by the familiarity of bureaucratic rules. And as McGilchrist writes,
increasing technologization and bureaucratization of life help to erode the more integrative modes
of attention to people and things which might help us resist the advances of technology and
bureaucracy, so that in this way they aid their own replication. All these trends have contributed
to a dangerous situation. Most of us rely far too much on the left hemisphere, and this is
stunting the development of our character in creating a population of men and women ill-suited
to the challenges of life. There have been swings in the pendulum, says McGilchrist. The balance of
power has shifted where it cannot afford to go, further and further towards the part-world
created by the left hemisphere. In his books The Master and His Emissary and The Matter with Things,
McGilchrist highlights many of the dangers associated with the left hemisphere dominance.
Much of this knowledge comes from a wealth of studies that have examined individuals with
physical damage to the right side of the brain due to a stroke or other form of brain injury.
But as McGilchrist notes, similar tendencies and character flaws are generated whether
one relies on the left hemisphere due to a brain injury, or due to habits and ways of
life that draw primarily on the potentials of the left hemisphere.
One problem associated with left hemisphere dominance is that the more we deploy the narrow
form of attention that is used for manipulating the world, the more we look at the world as
composed of objects to be exploited.
The natural world becomes a set of resources and other people become mere means to be manipulated
in the service of our goals.
Left hemisphere dominance, in other words, results in an excessive drive for power and
control over both our physical and social environments.
Or as McGilchrist writes, The left hemisphere’s principal concern is
utility.
It is interested in what it has made, and in the world as a resource to be used.
To make matters worse, while the left hemisphere is driven to manipulate the world and exert
power over it, it is unwilling to take responsibility for the mistakes it makes in the process of
this manipulation.
Its narrow focus interferes with the ability to stand back and look at the bigger picture
which is necessary to accurately assess where we have gone wrong.
Or as McGilchrist explains,
The left hemisphere is the willful consciousness, the one that makes things happen.
Its purpose is clear, action towards a target that is center stage, taking possession of
what is in full vision.
But unfortunately it knows remarkably little about all the rest.
So when things outside its ken happen, they logically must have been willed by someone
else.
They are someone else’s responsibility, or as he writes in The Master and His Emissary,
The left hemisphere may be unreasonably, even stubbornly, convinced of its own correctness.
Another flaw of left hemisphere dominance, as has been revealed by studies of right hemisphere
stroke patients, is that the left hemisphere’s take on the world tends to lack empathy.
The right hemisphere, as McGilchrist explains, is superior at reading body language and emotion
expressed in the face or voice, is better able to understand another’s point of view
and is essential for empathy. Left hemisphere dominance also leads to a disconnection from
reality, for the left hemisphere is great at creating models of the world that can help
it manipulate its environment, but in lacking the broad, sustained and open form of attention
that is the forte of the right hemisphere, it struggles to anchor itself in the world
as a whole. Or as McGilchrist writes,
The right hemisphere is more in touch with reality, and the left hemisphere more concerned
with the internal consistency of whatever virtual model of the world it happens to be
working with at the time.
If McGilchrist’s hypothesis is correct and most of us are overly reliant on the left
hemisphere, this can account for many of our social ills.
It can account for the rise of narcissistic individuals, as left hemisphere dominance
is associated with lower levels of empathy.
It can account for the relentless power-seeking that many of us display, and it can account
for the deformed character of many politicians and bureaucrats, for politicians and bureaucrats
are particularly susceptible to left hemisphere dominance, for their primary job is to adopt
the bureaucratic mindset that attempts to control society through science and technology.
This mindset leads to all the flaws of left hemisphere dominance including stubbornness,
arrogance, deceitfulness, a lack of empathy, a disconnection from reality, and an unwillingness
to take responsibility for mistakes, or as Miguel Crist explains, a culture that exemplifies
the qualities of the left hemisphere’s world attracts to itself, in positions of influence
and authority, those whose natural outlook is similar.
People with certain left hemisphere traits will be attracted to, and be deemed especially
suitable for, employment in the areas of science, technology, and administration which have,
the last hundred years been immensely influential in shaping the world we live in.
So long as most of us remain possessed by one side of our brain, and so long as we allow
ourselves to be ruled by those who suffer most acutely from this pathology, we place
ourselves in grave danger.
Our ability to control the world and to exert power over nature may continue to grow, but
our understanding of the world we seek to control will not keep pace, and this is a
recipe for disaster. Or as McGilchrist writes, The problem is that the very brain mechanisms
which succeed in simplifying the world so as to subject it to our control, militate
against a true understanding of it. Meanwhile, compounding the problem, we take the success
we have in manipulating it as proof that we understand it, but that is a logical error.
To exert power over something requires us only to know what happens when we pull the
levers, press the button, or utter the spell.
The fallacy is memorialized in the myth of the sorcerer’s apprentice.
While we have succeeded in coercing the world to our will to an extent unimaginable even
a few generations ago, we have at the same time wrought havoc on that world precisely
because we have not understood it.
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