Posted on 06/01/2025 4:36:30 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
I post this for the nerdy few of you who, like me, might find it interesting.;-)
This is a relatively short video interview of Dr. Iain McGilchrist, a highly regarded British psychiatrist, philosopher, and neuroscientist. In this video, he offers a theory as to why a large part of our culture thinks the way it does. He doesn't explicitly say “the political Left is left-hemisphere dominant.” But he clearly describes characteristics of left-hemisphere thinking that closely align with the behavior of the political Left—especially the Woke, extremist wing.
I've been listening to Dr. McGilchrist in podcasts for a while now and am reading his book, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World ("Our left brain is a wonderful servant, but a very poor master").
McGilchrist is famous for dispelling the old right-left hemisphere theory where the left was thought to be the center of logic, math, language, science and the right was the center of creativity, music, emotions, art.
He rejects this theory as superficial and misleading. He doesn’t deny that different functions localize in different hemispheres, but he argues the real difference is in how each hemisphere processes reality.
Here’s how he reframes it:
Left hemisphere:
Right hemisphere:
He believes that when a large part of the population has a dominant left hemisphere, they are collectively reductionist, bureaucratic, prone to groupthink, and eventually prone to a kind of spiritual and cultural collapse—because they lose connection to the deeper realities that only the right hemisphere can perceive.
bfl
Thanks for the post.
We often see the differences when the UFO topic is discussed.
If often seems like people are talking past each other with no understanding of the other points of view on threads here.
Other thought—Wikipedia is written in the language of scientific materialism—and dismisses as woo any other view.
“WHY Woke Leftists Are Bad at Understanding Others”
They just don’t want to; it’s all about them.
Regards,
Exactly.
McGilchrist talks about that in this video. He posits that social media makes it difficult for people to understand the context and nuance of comments made.
He explicitly states that left hemisphere thinkers are less willing to put forth the effort required to understand nuance and context (like listening to and pondering other points of view).
Makes me wonder if left-hemisphere dominance isn't more than just a Left-wing phenomenon. There may be some right here on FR.;-)
You misunderstood that part.
McGilchrist wasn’t saying that modern Leftists are engaged in legalistic self-analysis. He was referring to Alfred North Whitehead’s idea that civilizations begin to decline when they move from intuitive, tradition-based understanding to legalistic reasoning.
It wasn’t a comment about Leftists engaging in self-examination but a philosophical observation about how over-analysis in a culture can hollow out meaning over time.
Thanks for your insightful post!
I wasn't overly impressed with him on the whole. His "round-about" delivery is not conducive to clearly stating the facts. The laughter at the very end of the clip was esp. frustrating; Just answer the d*mn question already!
Regards,
bump
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