"Almost every function once thought to be the province of one or other hemisphere—language, imagery, reason, emotion—is served by both hemispheres, not one.
There is nonetheless a highly significant difference in how the two hemispheres work, giving rise to two wholly distinct takes on the world. Normally we synthesize them without being aware that we are doing so. But one of the two hemispheres can come to dominate—and just as this may happen for individuals,
it may also happen for a whole culture."
The two hemispheres also differ in their attitude to their differences. The right hemisphere is inclusive in its attitude to what the left hemisphere might know, but the left hemisphere is exclusive of the right. Where the right hemisphere's world responds to negative feedback, the left hemisphere gets locked ever further into its own point of view. Its capacities are limited to doing the same things it has always done, and no more.
Iain McGilchrist, the author of "The Master and his Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World" takes the reader through history's Greek, Roman, Renaissance, Reformation, Rationalism and the Enlightenment, up to the current world's mindset through the Left Brain / Right Brain Hemispheric perspectives.
Sort of ... the political state of mind as it affects the world's peoples.
Iain McGilchrist's full article is in The Wall Street Journal
No comments:
Post a Comment