divided brain
It would be crazy to suppose that our brains were so perfectly constructed that they could understand and make us aware of everything in the universe.
from The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning by Iain McGilchrist
divided brain
The left hemisphere is not in touch with the world. It is demonstrably self-deceiving, and confabulates – makes up a story, when it cannot understand something, and tells it with conviction. Michael Gazzaniga first demonstrated this in split-brain patients. Subsequent research shows that, unlike the right hemisphere, which tends toward self-doubt,
... See moreIain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
It sees that our understanding has to be participatory , and that the soul and body are not opposed but discernibly different aspects of one reality. It is better at holding together apparently conflicting positions – whereas according to the left hemisphere, nothing can be separate and connected, precisely measurable and intrinsically imprecise,... See more
Iain McGilchrist • Moving on
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.
River Kenna • Solving McGilchrist's Big Problem
two modes of experience McGilchrist describes (one associated with the left hemisphere, the other with the right) match up pretty precisely with two modes of experience that have been described again and again elsewhere, from Taoism1 to John Keats' letters2 to Federico Campagna's philosophy3 to Proust — you can even see it in things like Finite &... See more
River Kenna • Solving McGilchrist's Big Problem
McGilchrist brings up again and again that the right hemisphere is more deeply connected with the body than the left one, and that it specializes in broad, open awareness — so our obvious choices are open awareness meditation and somatic meditation .
The go-to options for learning about these are:
The go-to options for learning about these are:
- Reggie Ray
- Loch Kelly
- Judith Blackstone
- My Somatic
River Kenna • Solving McGilchrist's Big Problem
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... See more
Meet The Mind-Virus: Wetiko
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
... See moreIain McGilchrist • The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning
re-presented (interesting)
This has the profoundest consequences for the way it sees the world, when contrasted with the take of the right hemisphere, which sees things as a whole, never as isolated particles independent of a context.