Left-brain thinking will destroy civilisation

Well done, a superb interview. This resonated:
“One of the problems with universities now, as with schools, as with the medical profession, and with the whole of life, is the sudden explosion of bureaucratic procedures and thinking. There are manuals upon manuals that you’re supposed to read and observe and follow. And then we’re surprised that professionals, who are skilled people who have learned things through experience, want to leave the profession because they’re effed off with the way in which they’re cheated by managers.”
I am going to send that wonderful quote to a few well-deserving recipients.
I also blame the internet, and the decline of organised religion. In my teens, I despised churches. Decades later, I fret about their demise. Many people need that outlet for irrationality. Deprived of such outlets, they inflict their brittle minds on civil societies. The hoi polloi aren’t too bright, and there was a good reason why sophisticated societies evolved to keep most people’s opinions shut out of serious discourse. You’re not supposed to say that, but, unless you’re a serial woke bullfhitter, that’s a mere truism. It’s why we have representative democracy. Too many people simply are too intellectually lazy, too emotional, too inclined to favour simple solutions, to easily swayed by their cultures, to be trusted with direct (plebiscite) democracy. Too many people have an innate religiosity which regulates them rather more than reason ever does. Once deprived of a conventional outlet (such as regular churches), the hoi polloi’s innate predilection for irrational certainties will find an outlet in some other area, such as identity politics. Pretty much all of the identity politics manifestations, from critical race theory through trans rights to metoo, have all the hallmarks of cults, rather than anything rational.

Two fascinating articles today. There is so much to ponder but my (arguably left brain ) was left with two big impressions

Arendt’s “Once something can’t be said, you’re already in a tyranny.”

Surely at every period of history, in every society, there are things that can’t be said. Making a case for homosexuality100 years ago was a fairly sure path to social and professional ostracism, without going back to being burnt at the stake for a belief.

All collections of human beings develop rules (explicit or implicit) for living together
and punish those who don’t follow the rules,

So if living under some type of tyranny is the human condition, what is the best form of tyranny? How would you set about defining that? What constitutes its underlying parameters? Utilitarian (left brain) – what’s best for most, or something else?

The other thought was kids and IT. Like many older people I struggle with technology. I need “do A, then do B, and C will happen” instructions.

Watch kids on it. They just play with it, like early man must have played with his surroundings, intuiting what works. If you have no concept of a thatched roof, presumably you just fiddle around with straw until a use occurs to you.

Is this explorative way of thinking unwiring their brains from left brain thinking, or making it worse?

I’m inclined to think the changes over the next 50 years will enormous and for the worse, but don’t all old people think that? Maybe society will adapt to its new tyrannies and most people will keep their heads down and get on with life, like they always have.

A modern society that has the complexities of ours must be organic. The organ that looks after the law and keeps us sane has been taken over by chimpanzees. If we actually had law and it could be administrated with the wisdom of a twelve-year-old, we would not be in half of this mess. We know the court officers swear allegiance to secret societies, those secret societies are gnostics and they have an agenda of hate. If we had any sense at all, cults would be illegal and people that are members of cults would not be allowed to practice law. The level of corruption in the courts is actually unbelievable and only a small portion of the population sees the inside of the courts. This corruption, hubris, and hypocrisy will prevent us from recovering our sanity. Exactly why the courts are so corrupt is explained in my simple book “Assholes and Bullshit”. Our courts are Platonic in the sense that the chimps are there to help their friends and harm their enemies. Basic Christian doctrine can be applied and the problems become glaring and obvious. We need to convert our existing courthouses into zoos so that everyone can look in the chimpanzee cage, see what went wrong, and understand and respect the law. I guess not everyone can talk like this and maintain their positions in society. I have no position, no great job, the insanity wasn’t worth it and I will not pay income tax – that is like throwing bananas into a chimp cage. I live in Canada and am speaking about what happened to the greatest intellectual achievement of mankind – the English common law.

It’s always hard to argue against a prevailing point of view without going too far, even if only for rhetorical purposes, in the opposite direction. And I’m not sure that McGilchrist has even identified correctly the prevailing point of view in 2023.
I do agree that some people in our civilization (or any advanced civilization) have become too dependent on, to use his vocabulary, the brain’s left hemisphere. But I would add that other people, those who really are poised to prevail and destroy civilization in doing so, have become too dependent on the right hemisphere. Not all periods in the West have been as polarized as the current one, but conflict between the Enlightenment and Romanticism is as brutal now as it ever was the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (And I must add here that Romanticism has been the source not only of beautiful art, music and poetry but also of nationalism and its destructive racial ideologies). The problem is not that our civilization has somehow chosen the wrong hemisphere to value but that we haven’t managed to value both of them. Perhaps unwittingly, he trivializes the left hemisphere. Worse, his title indicates that this hemisphere endangers civilization itself. Even though he acknowledges that its preoccupation with focus, clarity and certainty has had survival value (and it surely does, although he doesn’t say so, in today’s rabidly anti-intellectual context), his choice of words indicates disdain for it. By implication, he’s among those who glorify feeling at the expense of thinking. He explicitly prefers a “holistic” attitude, moreover, which he identifies with the right hemisphere. But the word “holistic” would have no meaning if it were to dominate the left hemisphere.
So the pendulum continues to swing between two extremes. I don’t think that McGilchrist intended to suggest that we choose one or the other, but he chose a polemical format to make his argument. It doesn’t work for me. And it surely won’t do anything to challenge the reign of wokism. 

‘Will’ destroy? Already has! We’ve raised a generation of people that have no ability to discern, let alone navigate, complexity. Except when it comes to gender expression and sexual preferences… where the sky is the limit, apparently.

Even on Unherd there is a herd and I am always concerned when I find myself outside of it… but unlike most of the comments here, I actually did not find this to be an enlightening or insightful interview.
On the contrary, Dr. McGilchrist’s comments seem to me to be too vague and abstracted to mean much, irrefutable in their generality. Regardless of the physical connection between the hemispheres inside the cranium, hasn’t it always been obvious that there are different ways of thinking and seeing, and that successful societies benefit from all of them? This does not seem like a very interesting or controversial observation. We can slice those differences variously – instrumental vs. abstract, particular vs. general, rational vs. creative, immanent vs. transcendent, masculine vs. feminine, pragmatic vs. inspired, protective vs. nurturing, etc. None of these categories are adequate and neither is his – because none could be. We’re talking about the entirety of the human experience here! Put it this way: was John Stuart Mill (to pick a totally random example!) a right- or left-brain thinker? Whatever the answer might be, it would tell us little about John Stuart Mill and much about ourselves via the categories we prefer.
And is the predominance of one particular way of thinking about to ruin everything? Perhaps… but the vague generality of the conclusion is revealed when you realize that on this analysis the interview could just as easily have been titled “left brain thinking built civilization.” Left-brain thinking dominates today – and so we have penicillin? And electrical appliances? And the Bill of Rights? So maybe the pendulum just needs to swing back a little bit the other way; “all things in moderation.” Yes, of course, who could disagree? But this is the wisdom of the ages, nothing more, nothing less.
And then I began to think that Dr. McGilchrist’s comments are themselves expressions of a certain over-dominance of left-brain thinking – reductive, instrumentalist, etc. Granted this was a casual interview, but still he jumps and leaps among historical tidbits-turned-cliches that I found misleading and frustrating. I mean, blaming the Puritans for their conformity is a bit much – they were Non-Conformists! Every society everywhere has always believed that *some* things are vital to the integrity and health of that society and must be believed or else you face ostracism or worse. The question is always and only “What are *our* society’s central lodestar values going to be?” And his answer to that question is something vague about universal spirituality – an answer which has never actually satisfied anyone anywhere, much less brought harmony to societies or peace to mankind. It is, in the end, a kind of intellectual cowardice masquerading as humility.
Anyhow, I am sure, as others have mentioned, that his book is much more persuasive. But I’m sorry to say that the interview did not inspire me to read it.

Undoubtedly A.N. Whitehead’s most perceptive remark was “The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato”.

Plato died in 424/423 BC.

An interesting read and very thought provoking, and yet…
The title (which an editor may have chosen) “Left-brain thinking will destroy civilisation” catches the attention but is it true? Could you also assert that “Right-brain thinking will destroy civilisation”? Too much of either might be a bad thing.
Yes you can argue that Left-brain bureaucracy is sapping the joy out of life on the way to totalitarianism, but equally the Right brain fervour of advocates for Net Zero could be just as harmful.
Arguing for an appropriate balance between modern day Enlightenment and modern day Romanticism is a much harder task.

Very interesting – I’m sorry I missed this event. I think the distinction between focused attention and comprehensive attention is fundamental, and is why it is so difficult to explain the effect of great pictures, music and poetry except in unsatisfactory technical terms. I’m a bit more sceptical about his historical generalisations, but I will ponder.

A fascinating and excellent piece: as a right brainer, I find left brainers not only alien, but incredibly difficult to get on with, and would subscribe to the view that, not least because IT gnomes are left brainers, the world is being sequestered by them.

Wonderful interview with Iain McGilchrist. A documentary film called The Divided Brain, broadcast by the CBC, gives a good overview of McGilchrist’s thought and work; and includes interviews with scientists of opposing views. Available on the website The Divided Brain.

Interesting parallels with “Our Illiberal Empire of Rights” by John Gray in June 2019 Unherd. Gray argued that seeing all political disputes as arguments over “rights”, to be confirmed by the judiciary, rather than reasonable differences of opinion to be resolved through negotiation and compromise, was undemocratic. The “rights” fanatics are, it seems to me, very left-brain. Those willing to compromise and understand others, right-brain.

I enjoyed it, but it kind of really was a bit of a circular argument that he does believe there is spirit, say, which gives meaning. If we ignore it, and just be Left brain, meaning is lost to mechanistic processes.

As he said, using an ontological argument (that than which nothing can be greater). to prove an ultimate exists

kind of that spirit exists because there is ultimate meaning (in refutation to Modernism and Postmodernism atheist existentialism, say). And because ultimate meaning exists there is spirit. (haha)

He called it some kind of Pantheism, and even that spirit is a phase of matter existing as, and in, All the cosmos – but really, if you dig deep into his cosmology, it is Jedi. ‘Feel the Force Luke, it is all around you, it is in everything,,, the direct quote from the movie (dude where’s my car)

” Nelson : Deep inside your consciousness you must look. Concentrate on the knowledge inside you must. Zelmina, Space Nerd #3 : Does he have to talk like that? Christie b***r : I like the way you talk.
haha – but although I agree with McGilchrest 100% on how much I despise Nihilism and existentialism, and poststructuralism, and even Utilitarianism – he stands back from saying what I feel must be said:

That that is Evil, that it hates good which is why it refutes it by negating it. See, that is the problem with his cosmology – It has good as inherent, but skips actual malevolent evil.

If you ever have made it to tour Auschwitz it is quite a experience. One can feel Evil – it is as clear as the sun shining, it is all around…Weird – and I have felt it in other places. If you have felt evil – you believe.

Pick and Chose Pantheism – bit of Hindu, touch of Buddha, dash of Shinto, some Victorian ‘Benevolent Pantheism’ from the Romantic Poets (he does think poetry is in its own realm)….. It is not a religion, it is Hippy Spiritualism. It is a lazy cop-out. (to me)

His whole thing – – Left brain, the mechanical watchmaker and fileofax, right brain, the creativity, compassion, love, poetry, art…..Gray and white, no black – no Dualism…….I do not believe it…..

Instead of good and evil he has good and Nilos, nothing. And he says Nothing is winning now (left Brain, Modernism) This horror of the Liberal Left; Left Brain existentialism is just – what? lack of creativity? No it is Evil, it is Satanic.

He lives on Sky – I recommend some good Anchorite biographies. Maybe the Desert Fathers, Mont Athos – I find his cosmology as bleak as he finds the modernists….. Oh, well…

Excellent article. There are so many comments I would love to make, but I’m trapped in a world of left brained mundanity at the moment – although it’s right brained Love that’s making me do it. I reckon another year (tops) & I’ll be finished the near Sisyphean task I’ve taken on. If I haven’t shuffled off by then I’m hoping to start seriously engaging my brain (both sides) again.

The comment about the pernicious effects of the explosion of bureaucracy will ring all too true to many who experience it. However, there is a serious but. Bureaucracy may be a way of converting experimental or ad hoc procedures into routine good practice. That is a large part of the story behind immense improvements in the safety of air travel, surgery and medical practice more generally. Put differently, how do you ensure that mediocre practitioners get close to the performance of the most skilled and experienced practitioners. Checklists and standardised procedures are a way of doing that – in effect routinising good practice.
The problem is twofold. First, the way in which bureaucracy is adopted and implemented often goes along with a complete lack of trust in the competence of practitioners. That is what McGilchrist referred to in his example because what the manager was doing, in effect, was questioning the judgement of the consultant. The conclusion – why be a practitioner or consultant if those who you work with don’t trust your competence? – is inevitable. Still, there are incompetent or dishonest practitioners who insiders are all too often reluctant to identify and deal with.
Second, those who are good at creating or managing bureaucracy are all too often incompetent or unskilled practitioners who have a very strong incentive to play down the value of skills and experience in order to boost their own status and credentials.
Some of this is driven by legally-driven requirements for visible procedures which override discretion. Most types of law recognise that judgement, skills and experience are critical in many circumstances – hence the emphasis on “reasonableness”. The problem is that large organisations want certainty in conditions when that is not possible.
There is, of course, no real answer other than a continuous process of balancing different considerations. Organisations who veer too much in one direction or the other eventually die, either from paralysis and excessive costs or the unfettered consequences of individual incompetence.

I don’t know what is more striking, the trivializing of the true complexity of neuroscience or the facile application of a jargon-based fantasy to the real issues of the world. The same points could be made without a bogus effort to ‘neuroscientize’ them, and one might then be able to take them more seriously.

I read this with interest. Jumping from basic neuroscience to civilisation is always a tricky step. But intriguing. As I read this the quotation from William Blake , in his early prophetic work ‘The marriage of heaven and hell’ – the tygers (sic) of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.’ And one does certainly feel the horses of instruction have the upper hand these days. Thought provoking

Nice discussion, but it seems to me that our current state religion, wokeness, is most surely not suffering from too much scientific reductionism and dry logic.

The right brainers find having to undertake so much of life via internet/ on line extremely difficult, and this is the final takeover of the left brainers.

I think this is a series of sound points. A little ironic though that to reach the conclusion that society should be more holistic McGilchrist feels the need to constantly refer to the brain – a very reductionist explanation!

As fellow medics I have discussed The Master and his emissary extensively with my father. We do have different perspectives probably due to the generational differences, I feel that the concept of left and right brain that Dr Mcgilchrist uses seems to be too simple and binary for such a complex system as modern life. He does discuss complexity ( I have simple, complicated and complex written on my wall at work to remind myself) but then seems to push too hard for the world to fit into his way of describing it.
Always fascinating to hear him and helps me reflect on how I would describe my life and the patients I see.
Thank you UnHerd

A very informative article. The question that I would like ask is whether there is any link between this theory and Joseph Trainter’s ideas on the collapse of complex societies!?

Fascinating analysis and would explain a lot if it’s right.
Increasing screen time with left brain attention dominating would support it.
Question 2 interesting and explains why AI poetry is so awful.

I always like reading summaries of Iain’s work — I think this is a good one. The thing I find interesting is that the fragmentation he points out is also present in his own thinking. There also is no path to go more deeply into “how did knowledge get created in the first place?” Or how brains get programmed in the first place.
The answer to these questions exist (I have them) but I am not famous, and will never get to talk to someone like him. But for those that might wonder — here you go. https://empathy.guru/2019/04/06/what-is-structural-memetics-and-why-does-it-matter/

The world needs less ideology, fewer false dichotomies and less reductionism masquerading as science to promote misinformation. All these inherently cause division and conflict. We need more holistic systemic approaches to our problems. We need less of that which divides us and more that unites us in freedom and love.

Sort of Article that makes the subscription worth wading through some occasional dross. And Freddie didn’t seem to come at it with any particular thesis looking for an echo. Just good inquisitiveness and promptings. Really good.
I wonder if McGilchrist would though caution us to avoid too much generalisation of the Left and Right theory but we run away with it. His open-mindedness was almost contrary to the general theme of his theory. What is it 93billion or so neurons in the Brain thus with trillions of interconnections? – we understand so much more than we did even a couple of decades ago, esp with fMRI, but we remain v much in the foothills of comprehension of our most intriguing and mysterious organ.

This is the clearest understanding I can recall reading of why we are descending into an oligarchic tyranny where people must conceal any stray thought that departs from official approval. The Chinese are showing the way but we’re right on their heels.

All of this points to the “final cause” we largely lost sight of due to the massive error of Ockham who denied that in knowing, the mind becomes object known as Aquinas and Aristotle’s foundational sanity affirmed.
Essence and existence. Essence is the distinctness we find in existence. After this 14th century error of the Franciscan monk Ockham at Oxford, came along Hume’s self refuting epistemology and dogmatic incoherence.
We lost our understanding of God alive in His creation, of Truth, Beauty and Goodness.
So today I find myself a huge fan of Thomistic metaphysics and its affirmation that being is grounded in intelligible BEING , necessarily PERSON who again necessarily transcends our being and capacity to know but Who can share BEING with us. Person to person.
Our “final cause”, the ground of being and why being is ordered towards love and the transcendent. I am so very grateful to have been led to the rediscovery of this classic underpinning of life itself.
This was a terrific interview pointing in the same direction. Final cause. Meaning. Purpose. Love.

I really do find this right brain – left brain thing is way overplayed. Yes, there is some known localisation of function in the brain, but the more recent emphasis is on global functioning and plasticity. What evidence is there that one hemisphere can dominate in the way that is talked about here? The two hemispheres are actually joined down the middle after all.
I bet McGilchrist was a hippy in a former life…..Daniel Kahneman has a better explanation in ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’.

People here interpret the author’s description of the problems of left-hemisphere thinking to apply today’s progressive left (albeit veiled). But I think one could make a similar case for the opposite.
As one example, I just listened to Glenn Loury and John McWhorter talking with professor Vincent Lloyd. Lloyd is a strong advocate of what many would call “woke” perspectives, and advocates the abolition of all forms of “domination” (broadly construed) – including all the isms and phobias. But when asked what a society freed from all domination might look like, Lloyd says it cannot even be described in prose, but must be glimpsed through art and poetry. (Is he thinking of Lennon’s “Imagine”?) Does that reflect left-hemisphere dominance?
The current dominant progressive ideology we could call Critical Social Justice ideology (or “wokism” for some), has been described as utopian versus reality oriented, I think justly. It relies heavily on morality arguments and emotional thinking over rational and objective thought, and tends to disdain any reality feedback which fails to support the prime narrative.
Think about the folks you know (personally or via their work) whom you may consider advocates of critical social justice ideology. How many value objectivity or reasoned evidence-based search for truth, over emotional manipulation (eg: via outrage) and claiming the moral high ground trumps reason and evidence (whenever the latter contradicts them)?
Did critical social justice ideology start in, and first conquer, in the hard or soft disciplines?
I wonder if there is any objective tests (eg: fMRI studies) which could distinguish left vs right hemispheric dominance in people? It would be interesting to see if there is evidentiary support for asserting dominance of left or right hemisphere thinking among various populations. Without more evidence about the degree of linkage, I am skeptical of the hand waving associations being made between left/right hemispheric neuroscience, and real world political groups.
I do however appreciate the hypotheses to keep in mind while evaluating future evidence. There can be partial truths within many assertions framed as all true. One can be skeptical that some assertion has already met the burden of proof (or even ever will likely do so), and yet want it to have ongoing opportunity to do so in the future. We learn a lot by that which surprises our expectations – on the occasions where that happens.

Great interview and good to know IM’s work is reaching a wider audience. Prayer might be a great choice for rebalancing towards right brain and hence helping one better appreciate beauty, poetry, relationships etc. A multi channel approach can be quicker, but it’s maybe wise not to go OTT in favouring RB especially for young people – as even IM admits, LB is generally what helps you make money, esp. in a LB world.
 
Im not sure about the end of Civilisation thing. We dont know for sure why most civilisations have only lasted a few hundreds years. For me, the most convincing explanation is a decline in confidence and energy. That may not be the fatal problem is was for earlier civilisations, as we have robotics and AI. I wonder is anyone well versed in differentiating between LR & RB could conclude something like ChatGPT is Left Brained? It sure seems RB to me, given its balanced, non dogmatic  answers, which often reflect multiple perspectives. This would make sense given how its trained – rather than “learning” in a LB way by the imperative programming used for old school computers – it starts with an open mind and learns from huge data sets.

Very good – the man is an insightful genius.

Great article, I hope this encourages people to pay attention to Iain McGilchrist. Having said that, if you read this interview you probably do not need to wade through his epic book as I did

At 26:15 I’d love to know what was the opinion that dare not speak its name – a trope so palpably nonsensical but yet so universally acknowledged that he could not bring himself to admit to it presumably for fear of the kickback. Was it about race and intelligence, gender, or even global warming. Probably not the latter as he did later come across as a bit of a greenie. .

I’ve always wondered that some prize information but often lack the intellect to put it to good use while some who do lack the information to put into use. Balances out?