divided brain

Further, the right hemisphere’s understanding of knowledge and belief is experiential, not a simple matter of information in the abstract or acquiescing in dogma. It helps us see that ‘belief’ – the root of the word is ‘love’ – is a matter of dis positions, not pro positions, and of unconcealing, not correctness. The word ‘truth’ is cognate with ‘t... See more

Using McGilchrist’s terminology: for such an increasingly delusional, left hemisphere dominated mind everything turns into just another inanimate object: be it a beautiful 5000 year old tree, or a rich indigenous culture. Something which stands in the way of getting from point A to point B on the map (or standing in-between the selfish individual a... See more

The right hemisphere seems to be involved more with new experience, new events, things, ideas, words, skills or music, or whatever it may be, while they are still fresh, original and unique, and so to speak present, to the mind. The right hemisphere's world is present – or more precisely ‘presences’ to us, as Heidegger puts it. By contrast the left

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More than that, physics teaches us that, at the most fundamental level of existence, there simply are no discrete pieces of inert matter. Instead there are clusters of interrelated probabilistic events that change their nature when observed. In the words of the great physicist Richard Feynman, quantum mechanics deals with ‘nature as she is – absurd

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But there are still other paths to the abandonment of truth – darker than those we have discussed. In a world dominated by left hemisphere modes of being, two important developments could be predicted to proliferate: administrative control – evident in the decline of every civilisation – and machine learning. Both depend on algorithmic paths that a... See more

McGilchrist notes:

Only the right hemisphere has a whole body image; the left hemisphere sees the body as an assemblage of parts, and as if it were an object in space alongside other objects, rather than a mode of existence. ...For the right hemisphere, we live the body; whereas for the left, we live in it, rather as we drive a car.

What do I mean by ‘betweenness'? Think about the nature of music. Music does not exist in one particular note – which is in itself meaningless; or in a lot of such single notes, each in itself meaningless. I am tempted to say it exists more in the spaces than in the notes: the spaces between successive notes in pitch that creates the melody, the sp

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