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The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
In this 10,000-word essay, written to complement Iain McGilchrist's acclaimed "The Master and His Emissary," the author asks why - despite the vast increase in material well-being - people are less happy today than they were half a century ago, and suggests that the division between the two hemispheres of the brain has a critical effect on how we see and understand the world around us. In particular, McGilchrist suggests, the left hemisphere's obsession with reducing everything it sees to the level of minute, mechanistic detail is robbing modern society of the ability to understand and appreciate deeper human values. Accessible to readers who haven't yet read "The Master and His Emissary" as well as those who have, this is a fascinating, immensely thought-provoking essay that delves to the very heart of what it means to be human.
38 pages, Kindle Edition
First published July 1, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
December 1, 2020
Don’t hesitate, read it!
May 7, 2021
I first heard the author on the Sam Harris podcast Making Sense, he is something of an activist for right hemisphere thinking. He attributes a lot of our ills to the over reliance on the left hemisphere and its simplistic, unnuanced symbolism. The right meanwhile offering a broader, informed perspective and devil’s advocate function.
Complex and extremely interesting I hope to revisit this after McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
Complex and extremely interesting I hope to revisit this after McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
November 19, 2024
Wow. Short but packs a punch! Very intriguing proposition. Looking forward to the long-form book by the author
September 27, 2020
Picking the best, which itself ran into some 300 words from a small book of about 10,000 words, is a measure of the extent to which this cerebral work can engross the reader. I particularly liked the one which elaborates the true meaning of a metaphor. This is a must read for all of those who are intrigued by the complex muscle called brain. For me it would require couple of re-reads to savour and assimilate.
Here are some of my picks:
Much elegant research demonstrates that we are essentially blind to what we do not think
It is metaphors that carry us across (that is what the word ‘metaphor’ means) the implied gap between language and the world, and make what would otherwise be a hermetically sealed system of signs capable of meaning something in terms of embodied experience. They are how we understand everything. It followsthat limiting the possible meaning of languageby rendering it explicit also lmits the possible meaning that could be found in the world
The left hemisphere is not in touch with reality but with its representation of reality, which turns out to be a remarkably self-enclosed, self-referring system of tokens.
There is kind of reasoning, and an extent of reasoning, that is in many circumstances not only irrational, but actually one of the signs of madness. And as Aristotle emphasised, there are different kinds of reasoning, different kinds of knowledge, and different modes of understanding appropriate to different areas of life.
The arts and humanities need to remember this: they don't have to feel inferior to science, and try to model themselves on the. Like physicists, but in a quite dfferent way, they are in the ultimately important business of understanding the world and making sense of it, not just learning how to manipulate it.
The left hemisphere tells us that the quest for meaning is meaningless, because it is not equipped to deal in meaning or understanding, but manipulating and processing.
October 26, 2021
“Meaning comes from seeing the world as process, not from the world as a thing.” Process, intuition, the relationship of everything to everything else is a function of the right brain, but we live in a world dominated by the left brain. The left brain is good at manipulating the world, but not at understanding the world.
Prior to about 400 BC, the author maintains, the two hemispheres of the human brain worked together and life was more harmonious. That balance began to shift away with more emphasis placed on the written word. Julian Jaynes (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind) places a major change in human consciousness around the same time, hypothesizing that the two hemispheres first began to communicate with one another then. Karen Armstrong makes a similar point in The Lost Scriptures calling it the shift from mythos to logos.
This book, published in 2012 is intended to be an update of the same author’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World first published in 2009.
McGilchrist builds his argument on the fact that the right and left hemispheres of the brain are both capable of seeing the world in different ways. The left brain is logical, focused, it generalizes and deals with abstractions. The right brain is about meaning, process, relationships. These two large functions work together, one (right) providing the overall view, the context, and the other (left) focusing on details. He argues that Western culture has been so dominated by left brain thinking that while we have become adept at manipulating, or exploiting the world, we have lost meaning and become more empty and unhappy as a result.
I expect he will be criticized for over-simplifying a complex organ, one that we scarcely understand. Yet, whether or not his thesis is confirmed, the framework holds value as a way of thinking.
This is a short book and very worthwhile reading.
Prior to about 400 BC, the author maintains, the two hemispheres of the human brain worked together and life was more harmonious. That balance began to shift away with more emphasis placed on the written word. Julian Jaynes (The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind) places a major change in human consciousness around the same time, hypothesizing that the two hemispheres first began to communicate with one another then. Karen Armstrong makes a similar point in The Lost Scriptures calling it the shift from mythos to logos.
This book, published in 2012 is intended to be an update of the same author’s The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World first published in 2009.
McGilchrist builds his argument on the fact that the right and left hemispheres of the brain are both capable of seeing the world in different ways. The left brain is logical, focused, it generalizes and deals with abstractions. The right brain is about meaning, process, relationships. These two large functions work together, one (right) providing the overall view, the context, and the other (left) focusing on details. He argues that Western culture has been so dominated by left brain thinking that while we have become adept at manipulating, or exploiting the world, we have lost meaning and become more empty and unhappy as a result.
I expect he will be criticized for over-simplifying a complex organ, one that we scarcely understand. Yet, whether or not his thesis is confirmed, the framework holds value as a way of thinking.
This is a short book and very worthwhile reading.
December 11, 2023
Hea lühike sissejuhatus Iain McGilchristi uurimistöösse.
"We can only know the world as we have inevitably shaped it by the nature of our attention."
"I take it that we bring about a world in consciousness that is partly what is given, and partly what we bring, something that comes into being through this particular conjunction and no other. And the key to this is the kind of attention we pay to the world."
"What we do not expect to find, we just will not see: much elegant research demonstrates that we are essentially blind to what we do not think is there."
"The arts and humanities need to remember this: they don't have to feel inferior to science, and try to model themselves on them. Like physicists, but in a quite different way, they are in the ultimately important business of understanding the world and making sense of it, not just learning how to manipulate it."
"We kid ourselves that doctors, teachers, policemen are there to develop a ‘product’ which we can then ‘get’ or consume."
"Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not from abstract contemplation of it."
"We can only know the world as we have inevitably shaped it by the nature of our attention."
"I take it that we bring about a world in consciousness that is partly what is given, and partly what we bring, something that comes into being through this particular conjunction and no other. And the key to this is the kind of attention we pay to the world."
"What we do not expect to find, we just will not see: much elegant research demonstrates that we are essentially blind to what we do not think is there."
"The arts and humanities need to remember this: they don't have to feel inferior to science, and try to model themselves on them. Like physicists, but in a quite different way, they are in the ultimately important business of understanding the world and making sense of it, not just learning how to manipulate it."
"We kid ourselves that doctors, teachers, policemen are there to develop a ‘product’ which we can then ‘get’ or consume."
"Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not from abstract contemplation of it."
December 17, 2025
Bölünmüş Beyin ve Anlam Arayışı
Neden Bu Kadar Mutsuzuz?
Pinhan Yayıncılık
çok özet niteliğinde olmuş ama bir şeyler öğrendim, gerçek kitaba bakmak lazım
Neden Bu Kadar Mutsuzuz?
Pinhan Yayıncılık
çok özet niteliğinde olmuş ama bir şeyler öğrendim, gerçek kitaba bakmak lazım
September 13, 2023
This booklet summarises the results from McGilchrist's book The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World. The booklet is readable and puts his point clearly in this following long paragraph:
McGilchrist argues for a difference, a severe asymmetry of roles attributed to the hemispheres. According to him the left hemisphere is responsible for a reductionist view of the world to concepts and abstractions, to grids and caricatures, over and against the right hemisphere's creative, holistic, individualistic view of situations. The left hemisphere locks us into systems of symbols, whereas the right hemisphere connects those communication systems of the left hemisphere with the embodied world, thereby giving them meaning. The left hemisphere sees the search for meaning as meaningless, since the left hemisphere is locked in abstraction and cannot conceive of meaning. The right hemisphere finds meaning in the concrete.
According to McGilchrist we increasingly live in a world dominated by the tyrannical left hemisphere, concerned with processing, manipulating, achieving results, upping efficiency, checking verifiable hypothesis, which only ensures a safe kind of 'mediocrity'.
McGilchrist's take may be used to explain the sociopolitical situation we live in, but what is the 'way out' from this efficiency-oriented world with which there is a growing dissatisfaction? He doesn't provide an answer. His work may, however, help motivate us further to engage the right hemisphere, to practice using it, to evolve it, so that we may have a better chance of using it—in combination with the left hemisphere—to find that way out, one idea at a time.
For in humans, too, it turns out, the hemispheres pay different types of attention to the world – reach out a hand towards it (for that is what the word ‘attention’ means, the reaching out of a hand) in a different way or with a different set of priorities and values: to grasp and take for our own use, or to forge a connection and explore. The left hemisphere, as in birds and animals, pays the narrow-beam, precisely focussed, attention which enables us to get and grasp: it is the left hemisphere that controls the right hand with which we grasp something, and controls the aspects of language (not all language) by virtue of which we say we have ‘grasped’ the meaning – made it certain and pinned it down. The right hemisphere underwrites sustained attention and vigilance for whatever may be, without preconception. Its attention is not in the service of manipulation, but in the service of connection, exploration and relation.
McGilchrist argues for a difference, a severe asymmetry of roles attributed to the hemispheres. According to him the left hemisphere is responsible for a reductionist view of the world to concepts and abstractions, to grids and caricatures, over and against the right hemisphere's creative, holistic, individualistic view of situations. The left hemisphere locks us into systems of symbols, whereas the right hemisphere connects those communication systems of the left hemisphere with the embodied world, thereby giving them meaning. The left hemisphere sees the search for meaning as meaningless, since the left hemisphere is locked in abstraction and cannot conceive of meaning. The right hemisphere finds meaning in the concrete.
According to McGilchrist we increasingly live in a world dominated by the tyrannical left hemisphere, concerned with processing, manipulating, achieving results, upping efficiency, checking verifiable hypothesis, which only ensures a safe kind of 'mediocrity'.
McGilchrist's take may be used to explain the sociopolitical situation we live in, but what is the 'way out' from this efficiency-oriented world with which there is a growing dissatisfaction? He doesn't provide an answer. His work may, however, help motivate us further to engage the right hemisphere, to practice using it, to evolve it, so that we may have a better chance of using it—in combination with the left hemisphere—to find that way out, one idea at a time.
July 28, 2022
Unexpectedly Philosophical, In A Good Way
“The purpose of the left hemisphere is to manipulate the world, not understand it.”
It is only through the right hemisphere, which sees the whole picture, that the brain can construct meaning.
Our modern day world has been primarily crafted by the left hemisphere’s mode of thinking: we have learned to masterfully control our surroundings, but in the process we’ve shorn all sense of meaning from our lives.
This is all deeply philosophical stuff and not what I was expecting from an essay summarising decades of research on the left vs right brain (a lot of said research having come from the infamous split brain patients of the 50’s and 60’s).
“Explicitness kills, renders lifeless. An act of sexual love, or an act of worship, reveal little of their true selves in the lab, seen through an observation window.”
Explicitly explaining something (as the left hemisphere is equipped to do) kills its meaning. You could explicitly explain the colour blue as a particular wave length of electromagnetic energy being reflected from a surface. But this tells you nothing about what it feels like to experience the colour blue.
Similarly, per the quote above, the left hemisphere could vividly describe the mechanics, procedure and goals of sexual love or worship. But it could never tell you the real meaning. For that, the right hemisphere’s thinking is required.
My own tangential thought: many Buddhist meditation practices could be thought of as a practice to essentially help us quieten the left brain story teller, and listen more to the right brain. Perhaps “enlightenment” is nothing more that spending more time in the right vs left brain.
“The purpose of the left hemisphere is to manipulate the world, not understand it.”
It is only through the right hemisphere, which sees the whole picture, that the brain can construct meaning.
Our modern day world has been primarily crafted by the left hemisphere’s mode of thinking: we have learned to masterfully control our surroundings, but in the process we’ve shorn all sense of meaning from our lives.
This is all deeply philosophical stuff and not what I was expecting from an essay summarising decades of research on the left vs right brain (a lot of said research having come from the infamous split brain patients of the 50’s and 60’s).
“Explicitness kills, renders lifeless. An act of sexual love, or an act of worship, reveal little of their true selves in the lab, seen through an observation window.”
Explicitly explaining something (as the left hemisphere is equipped to do) kills its meaning. You could explicitly explain the colour blue as a particular wave length of electromagnetic energy being reflected from a surface. But this tells you nothing about what it feels like to experience the colour blue.
Similarly, per the quote above, the left hemisphere could vividly describe the mechanics, procedure and goals of sexual love or worship. But it could never tell you the real meaning. For that, the right hemisphere’s thinking is required.
My own tangential thought: many Buddhist meditation practices could be thought of as a practice to essentially help us quieten the left brain story teller, and listen more to the right brain. Perhaps “enlightenment” is nothing more that spending more time in the right vs left brain.
October 28, 2022
Pretty dense even for such a small book, the main argument revolves around how we perceive the world via 2 hemispheres of the brain and how the left dominates and gives skewed perception, as this book compliments the author's 1st book The Master and His Emissary, I gotta read that to get more coherent ideas.
March 28, 2021
4.5 Excellent essay!
September 13, 2025
I completed this book.
It gave me an idea of the personal and social impasse we find ourselves in between the left and the right.
It gave me an idea of the personal and social impasse we find ourselves in between the left and the right.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 21, 2019
Interesting and thought provoking essay
This essay and the research by the author explains quite persuasively that our brains evolved as two halves that work together to adaptively survive; the left hemisphere perceives reality in terms of parts and utility, the purpose of which is to manipulate, while the right hemisphere perceives reality as a whole system of connectedness, the purpose of which is to understand, or perhaps even simply to just ‘be.’ The latter third of the essay quickly pivots into a critique of modern society as driven largely by a left-brain ethos that is overly fixated on parts rather than a whole, and the author starts passionately going off on paragraph-long rants about advertising and academic funding. While I agree with a lot of his critiques, I am not convinced by what he says is the *cause* of them; the author doesn’t dive too deeply into why he thinks the left brain’s modus operandi ‘won out’ in the Western world’s value systems - perhaps I will find it in his book The Master and His Emissary, but here I feel I was asked to take it at face value. My personal view is that society is a pendulum that swings back and forth between various dichotomous values systems, with (hopefully) each swing bringing about a better understanding and a bit more wisdom. The fact that we now have McGilchrist’s essay and book may be one of the signs that we, as a society, are now ‘waking up’ to (once again) appreciate the interconnectedness of all things. Great food for thought!
This essay and the research by the author explains quite persuasively that our brains evolved as two halves that work together to adaptively survive; the left hemisphere perceives reality in terms of parts and utility, the purpose of which is to manipulate, while the right hemisphere perceives reality as a whole system of connectedness, the purpose of which is to understand, or perhaps even simply to just ‘be.’ The latter third of the essay quickly pivots into a critique of modern society as driven largely by a left-brain ethos that is overly fixated on parts rather than a whole, and the author starts passionately going off on paragraph-long rants about advertising and academic funding. While I agree with a lot of his critiques, I am not convinced by what he says is the *cause* of them; the author doesn’t dive too deeply into why he thinks the left brain’s modus operandi ‘won out’ in the Western world’s value systems - perhaps I will find it in his book The Master and His Emissary, but here I feel I was asked to take it at face value. My personal view is that society is a pendulum that swings back and forth between various dichotomous values systems, with (hopefully) each swing bringing about a better understanding and a bit more wisdom. The fact that we now have McGilchrist’s essay and book may be one of the signs that we, as a society, are now ‘waking up’ to (once again) appreciate the interconnectedness of all things. Great food for thought!
February 27, 2021
"Our problem is not that we have failed to find an answer to the question of the meaning of life that would satisfy the left hemisphere – in the nature of things, no such answer could exist. Our problem is that we have allowed ourselves to respond to this failure by deriding the question as meaningless. We shouldn't be trying to find a glib, explicit answer to it, since any such answer would be bound to be wrong. Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not from abstract contemplation of it. It is no more to be contained in a statement or a proposition than when I say of my friend that she means a lot to me, or that Schubert's C major Quintet means something that every living person should understand. It comes from the world as process, not from the world as a thing, and relies on patient and consistent attention to whatever might remind us of what meaning might be like. Whatever slight movement of recognition ensues might then begin to grow in and inform a mind not entirely closed to its existence."
May 27, 2019
An insightful take on the most important problem of our time
Dr. McGilchrist’s thesis is that our culture has become saturated in the perspective of the left hemisphere, which perceives the world as an object to be manipulated as a linear dynamical system. Missing the right hemispheres complementary perspective of the world as a nonlinear dynamical system we are part of has a cost, and is plainly mistaken. The cost of this perspective is the malaise of our time. I think he is entirely correct.
Dr. McGilchrist’s thesis is that our culture has become saturated in the perspective of the left hemisphere, which perceives the world as an object to be manipulated as a linear dynamical system. Missing the right hemispheres complementary perspective of the world as a nonlinear dynamical system we are part of has a cost, and is plainly mistaken. The cost of this perspective is the malaise of our time. I think he is entirely correct.
May 23, 2021
Unsettling and thrilling, the possibilities
I now am prepared to read his major work The Master and his Emissary. This essay summarizes ways in which the right and left brains have been misunderstood and misapplied. McGilchrist has set up a compelling argument about the dangers of using the brain to understand the world in a limited, useful way and the antidote of finding meaning by living in the world expansively. I look forward to seeing his influence on the next generations, if it's not too late.
I now am prepared to read his major work The Master and his Emissary. This essay summarizes ways in which the right and left brains have been misunderstood and misapplied. McGilchrist has set up a compelling argument about the dangers of using the brain to understand the world in a limited, useful way and the antidote of finding meaning by living in the world expansively. I look forward to seeing his influence on the next generations, if it's not too late.
June 27, 2021
A brief essay explaining how the divided brain has implications for the search for meaning in life. The left-hemisphere, with its divisory, black-and-white, manipulating tendencies is not adequate for the search, and if over-relied upon, can lead to nihilistic slumps where people think that there’s no meaning to be found anywhere.
“Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not from abstract contemplation of it.”
“Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not from abstract contemplation of it.”
May 7, 2025
Süper akıcı bir metin.Yazarın “Beyin Dünyayı nasıl Oluşturdu” adlı kitabını okumak için de yeterince motive etti.
September 21, 2024
a great nuanced and specific introduction to the brains hemispheres and the implications of their functions. i feel like i got a nice taste of mcgilchrist’s and am excited to read more. i enjoy his writing style and how he breaks down his pretty complex scientific and philosophical ideas in an understandable and unesoteric way.
March 16, 2018
The book starts with this quote by Owen Barfield
"How is it that the more able man becomes to manipulate the world to his advantage, the less he can perceive any meaning in it?"
and I think it does an absolutely amazing job at providing an answer. Something finally made sense to me.
"How is it that the more able man becomes to manipulate the world to his advantage, the less he can perceive any meaning in it?"
and I think it does an absolutely amazing job at providing an answer. Something finally made sense to me.
June 1, 2018
Great Overview.
I bought this after buying 'The King and the Emissary'. It offers a much more succinct and direct explanation of McGilchrist's ideas. I enjoyed the read and recommend it as a great initial overview on the subject.
I bought this after buying 'The King and the Emissary'. It offers a much more succinct and direct explanation of McGilchrist's ideas. I enjoyed the read and recommend it as a great initial overview on the subject.
July 20, 2018
The best of his kind
McGilchrist writing on the brain is simply the best we have. If you are interested in the subject you must read his work. This short book is perhaps the best place to start to get an introduction to his thinking.
McGilchrist writing on the brain is simply the best we have. If you are interested in the subject you must read his work. This short book is perhaps the best place to start to get an introduction to his thinking.
January 13, 2018
Well argued very short book on the need for balanced brain thinking about life and how the Left Hemisphere of the brain limits our engagement with life and the quality of it.
January 20, 2022
Although this is really just an essay and I wouldn’t consider it a book, it is an absolutely amazing essay. It deals with the subject of brain lateralization. It turns out that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have their own unique traits. Well duh!!
As many of us non neuroscientist know, the left brain is more analytical while the right is more creative. It turn out that this is not exactly the case. Although true the left brain is analytical in its processing, but the right brain has all of the analytical components to do such processing as well, but the right side also seems to be associated with patterns and seeing how things make up the whole. This has been well documented in a number of studies where there have been patients with right brain injuries. Here is a particular quote directly from the essay while talking about patients with a stroke to their right hemisphere, which controls the left side of the body, “Under such circumstances one has only the left hemisphere to go on, and, true to its proper function, it is interested only in the part of space that is of use to it, the right half of space. It is not interested in understanding the world as a whole, only with having control of the bit it manipulates. You can see this remarkable phenomenon on almost any general medical ward. Following a right-hemisphere stroke, the patient may cease to attend to anything on the left, whether it be a person, the left-hand page of a book, or the left half of the page, and in extreme circumstances may forget to dress or shave the left half of the body.” Where it gets really fascinating is when there is an injury to the left hemisphere, you’d think that the same same results would appear, but not true. Because the right hemisphere is now in charge, the right hemisphere is associated with pattern recognition and seeing how things fit together. So decisions can still be made, however when the right hemisphere is injured, decision cannot be made.
So, why is all this important? The author is attempting to make an analogy about brain lateralization with our perspectives on western and eastern cultures. The west is very VERY left brain centric. We try and break down everything to it’s most fundamental piece and try and understand the world through this lens. Which makes sense given our current political and economic landscape. We’ve been able to manipulate the world to our bidding and achieve greater understanding of individual systems, yet at the same time we are incredibly unprepared for the consequences of those manipulations, such as climate change. This is because the left side of the brain is always looking for more to break down and notice all the differences.
The East is very right brain centered, the east may not have all the economic freedoms that the west has, but it is widely assumed that the East is more content and happy with their way of life. This is because the East Is more right brain centered, which once again is associated with looking at the whole and seeing things not in their individual parts but as interconnected system.
Like I said at the beginning, this is a great essay and makes me want to learn more about brain lateralization. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes science and understanding more about our fellow human beings.
As many of us non neuroscientist know, the left brain is more analytical while the right is more creative. It turn out that this is not exactly the case. Although true the left brain is analytical in its processing, but the right brain has all of the analytical components to do such processing as well, but the right side also seems to be associated with patterns and seeing how things make up the whole. This has been well documented in a number of studies where there have been patients with right brain injuries. Here is a particular quote directly from the essay while talking about patients with a stroke to their right hemisphere, which controls the left side of the body, “Under such circumstances one has only the left hemisphere to go on, and, true to its proper function, it is interested only in the part of space that is of use to it, the right half of space. It is not interested in understanding the world as a whole, only with having control of the bit it manipulates. You can see this remarkable phenomenon on almost any general medical ward. Following a right-hemisphere stroke, the patient may cease to attend to anything on the left, whether it be a person, the left-hand page of a book, or the left half of the page, and in extreme circumstances may forget to dress or shave the left half of the body.” Where it gets really fascinating is when there is an injury to the left hemisphere, you’d think that the same same results would appear, but not true. Because the right hemisphere is now in charge, the right hemisphere is associated with pattern recognition and seeing how things fit together. So decisions can still be made, however when the right hemisphere is injured, decision cannot be made.
So, why is all this important? The author is attempting to make an analogy about brain lateralization with our perspectives on western and eastern cultures. The west is very VERY left brain centric. We try and break down everything to it’s most fundamental piece and try and understand the world through this lens. Which makes sense given our current political and economic landscape. We’ve been able to manipulate the world to our bidding and achieve greater understanding of individual systems, yet at the same time we are incredibly unprepared for the consequences of those manipulations, such as climate change. This is because the left side of the brain is always looking for more to break down and notice all the differences.
The East is very right brain centered, the east may not have all the economic freedoms that the west has, but it is widely assumed that the East is more content and happy with their way of life. This is because the East Is more right brain centered, which once again is associated with looking at the whole and seeing things not in their individual parts but as interconnected system.
Like I said at the beginning, this is a great essay and makes me want to learn more about brain lateralization. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes science and understanding more about our fellow human beings.
December 20, 2025
I have gone through most of my life thinking that my mind is primarily deductive. I'm better than most people at quickly finding the path from a to b and breaking it down into the intermediate steps. Creative people awe me. How do they manage to conjure up and cobble together works that are often completely illogical and yet hang together in ways that I can appreciate when I see them in their entirety. So I must be an analytical person. I have fostered my analytical skills and built my career around them.
But as I have grown older, I have learned that none of that is true. My analytical skills are not as good as I thought, plus, even at their apex they have their limitations. Much of what I do that that is analytical on the surface is infused with a creative element that gives it life and makes the whole thing work. I also have a creative side. I'll never be DaVinci, but to live my best life I need to cultivate that side too.
So I was happy to discover that Mr. McGilchrist validates all of my more recent views of my own brain. We all have left and right brains. We have to as a matter of survival. Their functions cannot be fully compartmentalized, but there are broad generalities about the different functions of left and right that include important truths (a very right brain idea). Much of this short essay reads as an attack on the left brain. It's too narrow. It tries to dominate. It's great at detail and at insisting that it is right, but fails to see the forest for the trees. The left brain mistakes consistent process for truth. We need the right brain to find meaning and to nurture the spiritual side of our natures. But still we need our left brains too and should cherish them. To be whole creatures we must have both sides. People who have only one functioning hemisphere or who have the hemispheres separated can still function very well, but there are consequences that I'd prefer not to ever suffer.
But as I have grown older, I have learned that none of that is true. My analytical skills are not as good as I thought, plus, even at their apex they have their limitations. Much of what I do that that is analytical on the surface is infused with a creative element that gives it life and makes the whole thing work. I also have a creative side. I'll never be DaVinci, but to live my best life I need to cultivate that side too.
So I was happy to discover that Mr. McGilchrist validates all of my more recent views of my own brain. We all have left and right brains. We have to as a matter of survival. Their functions cannot be fully compartmentalized, but there are broad generalities about the different functions of left and right that include important truths (a very right brain idea). Much of this short essay reads as an attack on the left brain. It's too narrow. It tries to dominate. It's great at detail and at insisting that it is right, but fails to see the forest for the trees. The left brain mistakes consistent process for truth. We need the right brain to find meaning and to nurture the spiritual side of our natures. But still we need our left brains too and should cherish them. To be whole creatures we must have both sides. People who have only one functioning hemisphere or who have the hemispheres separated can still function very well, but there are consequences that I'd prefer not to ever suffer.
February 19, 2025
How the left hemisphere won: A story of tragedy and hope
***
"An important consequence of this narrow-focus attention, aiming for certainty, is that it renders everything explicit. Just as a joke is robbed of power when it has to be explained, metaphors and symbols lose their power when rendered explicit. And metaphor is not a decorative turn, applied on top of the serious business of language in order to entertain: all thinking, most obviously philosophical and scientific thinking, is at bottom metaphorical in nature, though we are so familiar with the metaphors that we don't notice their existence. It is the metaphors which provide the ‘something else’ which we know more intimately from our embodied, preconceptual experience, and to which we are, in every word we use, properly understood, making a comparison. It is metaphors that carry us across (that is what the word ‘metaphor’ means) the implied gap between language and the world, and make what would otherwise be a hermetically sealed system of signs capable of meaning something in terms of embodied experience. They are how we understand everything. It follows that limiting the possible meaning of language by rendering it explicit also limits the possible meaning that could be found in the world."
***
"An important consequence of this narrow-focus attention, aiming for certainty, is that it renders everything explicit. Just as a joke is robbed of power when it has to be explained, metaphors and symbols lose their power when rendered explicit. And metaphor is not a decorative turn, applied on top of the serious business of language in order to entertain: all thinking, most obviously philosophical and scientific thinking, is at bottom metaphorical in nature, though we are so familiar with the metaphors that we don't notice their existence. It is the metaphors which provide the ‘something else’ which we know more intimately from our embodied, preconceptual experience, and to which we are, in every word we use, properly understood, making a comparison. It is metaphors that carry us across (that is what the word ‘metaphor’ means) the implied gap between language and the world, and make what would otherwise be a hermetically sealed system of signs capable of meaning something in terms of embodied experience. They are how we understand everything. It follows that limiting the possible meaning of language by rendering it explicit also limits the possible meaning that could be found in the world."
March 29, 2020
Brilliant. Amazing how much wisdom can be succinctly compressed into less than an hour's reading.
This video youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI gives somewhat of a summary of the essay-book.
The basic proposition is that
* the RHS of the brain is about discerning context and meaning
* the LHS is largely about utility; how to realise (manifest) the meaning
* our culture gives almost all of its authority to the left and very little to the right
* a left-oriented world is about power without purpose
* a right-oriented world is about purpose without power
* we need to give both sides of the brain equal authority
This video youtu.be/dFs9WO2B8uI gives somewhat of a summary of the essay-book.
The basic proposition is that
* the RHS of the brain is about discerning context and meaning
* the LHS is largely about utility; how to realise (manifest) the meaning
* our culture gives almost all of its authority to the left and very little to the right
* a left-oriented world is about power without purpose
* a right-oriented world is about purpose without power
* we need to give both sides of the brain equal authority
June 4, 2020
A short, very short, and stimulating read mainly covering issues with the rational left hemisphere. It has made me want to read McGilchrist's book "The Master and His Emissary". McGilchrist explores what is conveyed (was going to type 'meant' but if you read the booklet you will see why that is inappropriate) when considering the right and left hemispheres of the human brain. Some of the language used seems obvious in intent but the image is elusive or maybe shape-changing. That said what McGilchrist describes sits well with my personal experience and observations of the world. It is a work which may make some readers grit their teeth as they reject McGilchrist's explanations.
March 17, 2021
In a world that is headed straight for catastrophe this brilliant exposition of much longer work explains why. Tragically, in my opinion, Iain McGilchrist's exposition gives little hope that humans will arrest their dash - and it has become a dash - for disaster.
McGilchrist's brilliant analyses of the left brain/right brain phenomenon shows that as a species we are trapped in a kind of thinking, seduced you might say, and the outcome is the continuing rape and destruction of the planet. If you read his analyses and do not end pessimistic about the future of humanity then I fear you have not understood.
McGilchrist's brilliant analyses of the left brain/right brain phenomenon shows that as a species we are trapped in a kind of thinking, seduced you might say, and the outcome is the continuing rape and destruction of the planet. If you read his analyses and do not end pessimistic about the future of humanity then I fear you have not understood.
September 13, 2023
I can thoroughly recommend this essay on the nature of the two brain hemispheres - what they do and what they’re like. Why we need both and why as a society we’re becoming left-dominated, with less appreciation of tone, irony, metaphor and humour.
Forget the simplistic, convenient explanation that “the left brain is rational and the right brain is emotional” - this isn’t the point. In McGilchrist’s own words, “one way of looking at the difference would be to say that while the left hemisphere’s raison d’etre is to narrow things down to a certainty, the right hemisphere’s is to open them up into possibility.”
Wise, erudite and indispensible.
Forget the simplistic, convenient explanation that “the left brain is rational and the right brain is emotional” - this isn’t the point. In McGilchrist’s own words, “one way of looking at the difference would be to say that while the left hemisphere’s raison d’etre is to narrow things down to a certainty, the right hemisphere’s is to open them up into possibility.”
Wise, erudite and indispensible.
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