Ways of Attending: How our Divided Brain Constructs the World

by Iain McGilchrist

Attention is not just receptive, but actively creative of the world we inhabit. How we attend makes all the difference to the world we experience. And nowadays in the West we generally attend in a rather unusual way: governed by the narrowly focussed, target-driven left hemisphere of the brain.

Forget everything you thought you knew about the difference between the hemispheres, because it will be largely wrong. It is not what each hemisphere does - they are both involved in everything - but how it does it, that matters. And the prime difference between the brain hemispheres is the manner in which they attend. For reasons of survival we need one hemisphere (in humans and many animals, the left) to pay narrow attention to detail, to grab hold of things we need, while the other, the right, keeps an eye out for everything else. The result is that one hemisphere is good at utilising the world, the other better at understanding it.

Absent, present, detached, engaged, alienated, empathic, broad or narrow, sustained or piecemeal, attention has the power to alter whatever it meets. The play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged. How you attend to something - or don't attend to it - matters a very great deal. This book helps you to see what it is you may have been trained by our very unusual culture not to see.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Science, Nonfiction, Neuroscience, Cultural, Psychiatry

32 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2016

Reviews

[Morgan Blackledge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erudite beyond belief.

McGilcrest braids deep philosophical insights, impeccably stated and rigorously researched scientific truth claims, gorgeous poetic ephemera, and sublime spiritual insights.

This (oddly short) little snack of a book seems to function somewhat like a cliff notes version of his masterpiece, The Master and His Emissary (TMaHE). And seems like a counterweight to his (ridiculously long) The Matter With Things, which reads like a protracted extrusion of TMaHE.

Absolutely read this.

But.

Absolutely read TMaHE first.

Then…

By all means.

Read anything and everything this guy writes.

5/5 good/true/beautiful stars ✨

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I'm not entirely sure I am comfortable calling this a book...it is only 30 pages long and appears to be mostly an advertisement for McGilchrist's book The Master and His Emissary.

He does present a nice overview of the diferences and similarities between right and left brain. His argument is that for years neuropsych believed that they had different functions and addressed different aspects. This is true, and yet not so simple. It is not that each half has it's own purview; it is that both halves engage with the world in different ways. Essentially, the right hemisphere gives us the gestalt (entire picture) while the left hemisphere breaks it down and compartmentalizes.

He argues that the world itself has prioritized left brain processes and that we (Western society) are often focused more on the pieces that the gestalt. This left brain dominance is the Emissary from Nietzsche's story of the Emissary taking over for the Master. The right brain is the dominant: without it we are lost with no map, but the left brain has convinced us of the opposite: "the self-consistent rationalism of the left hemisphere has convinced it that it does not need to concern itself with what the right hemispher knows: it believes it has the whole story itself."

Overall interesting and compelling, very short article (not really a book).

[Enrique · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two brains theory meets phenomenology.

Phenomenology is present, especially Husserl's intentionality of conscience. What Heidegger later refined with "the care", now is called attention.

I need to read the complete version of this theory to have a better judgment.

Anyway, it's a good read.

[Ogi Ogas · Rating 3 out of 5]

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

[Kimberley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slender book is a good access point to Ian McGilchrist's seminal work, "The Master and His Emissary." It's much slimmer than I expected, thus the 4 stars. His other book is hundreds and hundreds of pages! (And I believe he's in the midst of a new one.) I find McGilchrist's to be one of the most important voices in our left-brain infatuated times! Now, more than ever, I'm more conscious of who, in fact, is the master, and who, in fact, is the servant. I try to put my left brain to work to help me accomplish my lofty, loving, holistic, right-brain goals.

[Joachim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Neuroscience meets philosophy. In a way it reads like an argument against post-modernism and its reductionism. Touches lightly on enactivism and sense-making. Actually I’d say it reads like a neuroscientists/psychiatrists take on sense-making — attending the world. Loved it!

[Vita Pires, Ph.D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very short intro into his masterwork-brilliant!

[Madhab Dwibedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful little books
for the protection of left hemisphere

[E7boehm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rather short but a good introduction to Iain M theory of two minds . I think it is always a bit of a platonic thing. He does get at the question of the implicit v explicit which has always interested me. I see the left as governing more than the right with time. Both have their place, but his attack on the rigidity of the left has made me open my mind to times when I have been rigid. I am sort of having a right side awaking and I am hoping it is for the good.

[Stanley S Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Insight into our shared confusion

Clear explanation of our shared cultural confusion. Why our commitment to acquiring things doesn’t make us more feel more successful or help us understand ourselves and each other.

[Raphael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a summary of his masterpiece work "The Master and his emissary" (2009). It exposes in a succinct yet compelling way the thesis which have revolutionized my understanding of our world.

For all those short on time out there, this is a must read

[Terry Cooke-Davies · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Rare Treat

In the world of management, there is a market for ‘potboilers’ - concise summaries of management books that ‘extract the meat’ from them for busy executives who do not have the time to digest the original work itself.

This essay by Iain McGilchrist is the author’s own précis of one of the most important books of the past decade. It is eminently readable, and powerfully makes a case that our divided world badly needs to hear.

At a time when the idiosyncrasies of human nature pose the greatest threat to the wellbeing of our own species, the metaphor of the Master and his Emissary deserves a prominent position in public discourse. I cannot recommend this little book too highly.

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick sip! McGilchrist argues that the way we pay attention (attend) influences the way we engage the world. The left hemisphere of the brain leads to focused, analytical attention, and the right is broader and more relational, highlighting connections. He warns that modern society is prioritizing the left hemisphere, and to reclaim a more beautiful and richer way of being, we would benefit from developing and celebrating a more holistic, right brain centered engagment in the world.

I always thought I operated in the right hemisphere because I am left- handed, but that myth has largely been disproven.

[Daniel Fridgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good and insightful summary on the hemispheric differences. I enjoy McGilchrist’s notion of attention and the idea that attention is not just another ‘function’ alongside other cognitive functions”. But that it is something that in a way shape our worlds, that the kind of attention we bring to bear on the world actually alters the nature of the world we attend to. And that each hemisphere has a different kind of attention. I also enjoys that plants a seed to understanding our current everyday society as one being dominated by the attentive perspective of one hemisphere.

[Jonathan Latshaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 30 page book is a reprint of an article. It is a 10,000 foot view of his work, The Master and His Emissary.

McGilchrist, I believe, is basically correct in his understanding of the hemispheres and how that has influenced western culture. This small book was what I needed to commit to reading his much larger work in the future

[Antoinette Coetzee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read! Made me reach for the Master and his Emissary immediately. The description of a world where the left brain, the Emissary, is left to its own devices, acting independently of the right brain's wholeness and seemingly magical ability to create beyond what is tangible, factual and comprehensible, is spine-chilling...

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never has a book left me with so much desire to:
* Meditate on my relationships
* Revisualize how I perceive my body and consciousness
* Have a book club discussion
* Feel compassion for others and their self-imposed hemispheres

I probably helped that I'd already read The Master and his Emissary, this just drove home some of the main points.

Good Stuff!

[Alex Delogu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very short and digestible introduction to Iain McGilchrist's ideas. I would recommend it those who are hesitant to commit to his larger philosophical works, though it is clearly not a substitute for the richness of those longer works.

[franzinera · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an interesting little read. It talks about the processes in the brain in a somehow technical way, but also let's you thinking about philosophy and society. Is not attention in the sense of an action, but attention in a more general holistic way. I would love to read more about all this

[Nick Swenson · Rating 5 out of 5]

GOOD SUMMARY

This short book offers a helpful summary of his longer works, yet not lacking in insight and style unto itself. This humane notions presented are gripping in their comprehensiveness.

[Dan Bartlett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic summary of Iain’s work, particularly one of the final sections that describes what the world “would” look like if the left hemisphere dominated. Paperback is expensive for its small size but there is an audiobook version in Spotify with an excellent narrator.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

At just 30 pages, this felt less like a book and more like a chapter, and for the price I'm wondering where the rest of it is! A great read though, and an insightful, if disturbing, look at the increasing dominance of left hemisphere ways of constructing the reality we live in.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

More like summary essay than a book.

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth multiple read-throughs to savor the concepts. Short enough to make this relatively easy.

[Chippiya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Succinct, scientific, spiritual and so so relevant to the current times. Highly recommend!

[Bowen Dwelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

“What the left hemisphere offers is… ‘unpacking’ what is there and handing it back to the right hemisphere, where it can once again be integrated…”

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short but clear summary of Iain's magnum opus, "The Master and his Emissary".

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting to see what the sciences say about the brain.

[Bonyo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Five star short and sweet book capturing society’s thought evolution, and painting a clear picture of how people have unfortunately become as a result of left brain focus. A must read.

[Timon Ruban · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice get-together of science and philosophy. Experiencing necessarily comes before knowing.