Iain McGilchrist: “We don't talk about beauty anymore. The one word is ‘power’. Everything that we talk about, everything is calibrated by power. […] It seems to me that the dialogue of our time has been, from both science and popular philosophy, to try and explain to the left hemisphere these [apparently] inexplicable things:
“Why would you be generous? Why would you forego your own needs for somebody else? Why would you waste time on truth if something that's a total falsehood would serve better? Why would you bother being good? Why would you care about beauty?”
The account [we are given] is that the concept of ‘the holy’ was invented by a priesthood who just wanted power over the people, and that ‘truth, goodness, and beauty’ are things that help hold the society together (but the poor fools can't see through them to the fact that they're really just to do with control) and so on. Ultimately everything has to do with what Scheler thought was at the rock bottom, the least valuable, which is pure and simple utility. …That's the story we've been told, and it's so wrong.”
https://youtu.be/e2BWdQsGXCs?t=2478
I think this discussion of values dovetails with a discussion of which practices we might follow to effectively ‘open us up’ to those things that bear the characteristic imprint of the right hemisphere, rather than ‘close us down’ to that which bears the imprint of the left hemisphere. As McGilchrist wrote: "Many readers who share my deep alarm at the world we are creating asked the obvious question: ‘So, what’s the solution?’ Some may have hoped for a five-point plan, but of course there isn’t one... We need to do nothing less than reconceive our world... we need to redirect our attention to what-out-there-is-not-us." So which practices, if any, might promote this? No one has attempted a sort of ‘systemic review’ to evaluate the wide panoply of practices in the light of the hemisphere hypothesis. I would expect that, if such a review is ever undertaken, it might at least reference the 20 ‘headline differences’ between the hemispheres listed in TMWT (if not each of the chapters).
For example, “the LH tends to see things as explicit and decontextualised, whereas the RH tends to see them as implicit and embedded in a context”. Accordingly, any practice that permits contextualization, such as mindfulness meditation, would be a good candidate for a ‘RH practice’. Another: “the RH [prefers] the animate”. Does the practice support recognition of animacy, and of uniqueness, and empathizing with another’s point of view? (Carl Rogers said "The
curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.") Does the practice encourage Gestalt perception (as opposed to categorization according to a particular feature)? There are other processes that align with the right hemisphere, such as those involving embodied, fluid motion, as opposed to the paralysis and perseveration that characterizes certain psychopathologies. (I think of
James Lovelock’s practice of taking long walks at his "signature breakneck speed”.) Does the practice leverage the importance of relationality (the community or sangha) for assistance? What about altered states of consciousness, like dreams, or music? To maintain presence in the 'here and now', does it discourage excessive abstraction? Many other aspects might be added, and Fred Bryant, David DeSteno, and Wendy Wood described still others (see also Stamatis Moraitis of Ikaria).
What makes practices so inexplicable to the LH is that they are not undertaken for any explicitly ‘utilitarian’ value per se, rather for their capacity to change how we attend to the world. Nonetheless, if our way of attending is transformed, and we see what we may have been formerly blind to and/or negligent of, we might engage with the world in a more responsive manner. While practices may be described as something new that we take on, perhaps they are just as well described via negativa in terms of what we give up or avoid, what we "refrain from grabbing onto". McGilchrist also wrote that “clarification works by a process of un-obscuring... the Greek word for truth, aletheia, means an un-concealing or dis-covering of what it is that exists”. This culminates in the sage’s ‘practice of no practice’ (Feng Youlan’s 'cultivation of non-cultivation'), a paradoxical asceticism where 'mountains are mountains' once again:
Iain McGilchrist [in conversation with Mark Vernon]: "I think this may sound negative, but 'resistance', and 'the negative', and 'the contrary', and 'the opposite' are often very important ways to go when we're trying to achieve a goal. What I would say has been important for me is mainly the things I don't do. I don't have a television. I hardly ever listen to the radio now. I don't do social media at all. I live somewhere where it's very silent. You cannot hear the road, perhaps once a week you might hear an aeroplane. What you hear in this silence is everything is happening, everything around you is alive: the trees, the hills, the cliffs, the waterfalls, the sea... And so, when I come to think about it, it's really more about what I don't do. I create open spaces. Life comes to us if we create the space for it. If we keep trying to make it happen we force our conceptions on it. In psychotherapy one of the things people are told is "Stop doing the things that you know you're doing that aren't working. Try something completely different and opposite to that."
https://youtu.be/82AZYcvBkzM?t=4992
McGilchrist wrote that attention "is the manner in which our consciousness is disposed towards whatever else exists. The choice we make of how we dispose our consciousness is the ultimate creative act: it renders the world what it is. It is, therefore, a
moral act: it has consequences." Whitehead wrote: "Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle – they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments." A few observations at this point: the manner of attention is important, and it is also a scarce resource that one should shepherd carefully. Yet for the most part we are indiscriminate in both regards, recognizing no difference between our manner of attention, whether that be of the left or right hemisphere, nor do we properly value the limited opportunities available for us to exercise it. Most often, we tend to dispose ourselves freely toward almost any distraction whatsoever. A 'RH practice' would take both considerations into account to allow us to 'self-actualize' and live an authentic life. It would jealously guard, and
be immensely grateful for our fleeting opportunities to engage in the most appropriate actions, contextually informed by our current predicament. Such a gift should never be taken for granted, but defended from the threat of insurgence by the LH by imposing
clear boundaries upon the role it shall have in affairs (with "axiological tribosystems", aka "values-based friction") One might say that we must transparently
see through the occluding LH layers down to the RH intuitive understanding of what's really at stake… and then let that go too. Some say, in a paradoxical manner, that by self emptying we self realize. ...Which particular contextually informed actions these may be is really a secondary consideration. They will be whatever the moment calls for (in my case, perhaps studying to acquire a
second language, like Japanese), and they will involve "
perceptual depth" and artistic skill (see section on this below). It's true, there are certainly some actions that are called for perennially, and these might become ritualized. But regardless, once the context is understood, it should be responded to with the RH 'guiding the hand' of the LH, and as the context changes so will our response to it.
Remaining with the Fertile Night
Saint-Exupéry’s most famous line from
The Little Prince is “What is essential is invisible to the eye.” It reminds me of that famous quote from the biochemist
Erwin Chargaff in which he described the “fertile night”. It's from a chapter titled “In the light of darkness” from his book
Heraclitean Fire: Sketches from a Life before Nature (1978) It’s an experience we’ve likely all had at one point or another. In large cities it’s called ‘light pollution’. If there’s a bright light, it illuminates only that region upon which it is directed, while everything else is plunged into darkness. But turn off the light and as our eyes adjust to the darkness we become aware of a much larger world around us. This is something we know from experience, though if we didn't, then describing it plainly like this would probably sound paradoxical.
Why should more light diminish what we are aware of?
By disclosing one aspect of our world with greater clarity, other aspects are concealed from our awareness. It not only happens in this way, due to the optics of our eyes, but also with the ‘light’ of attention when we become hyper-focused on certain features of the world. And this is why McGilchrist referenced that line from Chargaff in
The Matter with Things. We have both the ‘torch’ (British term for flashlight) of the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere’s ability to remain with the ‘fertile night’, which allows us to see the heavens. The naturalistic Confucian
Xunzi wrote that we "must be capable of embracing all changes, a single corner will not suffice". As he wrote, a person capable of doing so "may sit in their room and view the entire area within the four seas, may dwell in the present and yet discourse on distant ages" (
Hsun Tzu: Basic Writings). This may also help us understand the potential problems that the “bright torch” of chatGPT could produce. AI will enable us to know some small corner of truth in far greater detail than we could without it, but at the risk of blinding us to still more. Returning to Chargaff's metaphor, it could prevent our eyes from adjusting to the dark and seeing what the world of the right hemisphere has to say about life and living. In
The Matter with Things McGilchrist wrote:
“The essential point is that every disclosure is also a concealment. Every closing down of potential into an actuality – itself a necessary, even fruitful step – is by the same token a limiting of reality to what has been selected. If it had not been selected, one might have discovered something immensely larger within that field of potential – now forever narrowed to what it is we think we clearly know. Remaining with the ‘fertile night’ means not closing down too soon, too readily, on something that looks familiar – the lumber room that shows up by the light of the torch immediately round us – but instead allowing our eyes gradually to become adapted to the dark so that we see the starlit mantle of the heavens immeasurably further beyond. That, not the lumber room, is where science is destined to take us; revealing, if it is successful, not mere clarity, but ever deeper mystery.”
McGilchrist has described the LH as "a good servant, but a very poor master". And I think chatGPT, despite the appropriate cautions described, can be a very good servant indeed! In that recent conversation between
Jordan Peterson and Brian Roemmele, it was very interesting to hear them consider the advantages. Among the topics they discussed was the capacity to make new connections within an immense corpus of training data. With targeted questions we can find those which we are looking for. So, to the extent that the process of creativity relies on uncovering these new connections, this is very useful. Another interesting topic is that of "prompt engineering". Psychologists and non-STEM majors are perhaps better equipped to handle the input and output of chatGPT because prompt engineering is different from computer programming languages: it is all done in the language of human thought and psychology. But, given that human psychology is vulnerable to confabulation and confirmation bias, some additional work with the output is still required (as we've
seen recently).
So combining the capacity to form new connections, with that of writing the prompts needed to uncover them, it appears that chatGPT is very much like that "narrow beam" of the LH, focusing in with laser precision to "get and grab" what it wants; it's a supercharged left hemisphere. Language has been the most powerful tool for our LH, so the capacity for chatGPT to be the best polyglot in the world is especially interesting to me. Particularly in that it can help to translate non-human communication as well (we might decipher the
speech of animals). Given all this, anyone who wants to look carefully at a topic would be foolish not to use chatGPT. Predictably, it has become an invaluable tool for almost all knowledge workers. One might say this is an inevitable result of the
extended mind thesis of Andy Clark and David Chalmers. (Often cited among four qualities: embodied, embedded, enacted, extended.)
Returning to Chargaff, there's a few longer passages that resonate with McGilchrist's description of the right hemisphere:
“This brought me back to ancient times. I was twelve years old and invented devices or mottoes for my future life. These were properly heraldic and, therefore, in Latin, as befits the escutcheon of an Untergymnasiast (high-school boy). There was oculis apertis or larvatus prodeo; but most often there was an armorial mole, and it said fodio in tenebris. "I dig in darkness," said the mole, and was hopelessly subterranean. The sun may have shone on the ground; but deep down there was the stylized animal performing its blind excavations.
“Was I not born and sustained by the darkness that enveloped equally my past and my future? A small boy begins by being unable to explain the explainable, but when he grows old he often looks away from what cannot be explained. I am grateful that fate has preserved me from this form of blindness. Surrounded by a surfeit of solved riddles, I am still struck by how little we understand. I would not go so far as to claim that knowledge and wisdom are mutually exclusive; but they are far from being communicating vessels, and the level of one has no bearing on that of the other.
“What I had at that time - and it has never left me - was a dream of a reality that we could only touch tangentially, an awe of the numinous of nature whose power rested in its very unattainability. It was a feeling for the necessity of darkness in the life of man. …the scientist of the future… will be conscious of the perpetual darkness that must surround him as he probes nature.
"...I have always oscillated between the brightness of reality and the darkness of the unknowable. When Pascal speaks of God in hiding,
Deus absconditius, we hear not only the profound existential thinker, but also the great searcher for the reality of the world. I consider this unquenchable resonance as the greatest gift that can be bestowed on a naturalist. [...] It is the sense of mystery that, in my opinion, drives the true scientist; the same force, blindly seeing, deafly hearing, unconsciously remembering, that drives the larva into the butterfly. If he has not experienced, at least a few times in his life, this cold shudder down his spine, this confrontation with an immense, invisible face whose breath moves him to tears, he is not a scientist.
The blacker the night, the brighter the light." (
Heraclitean Fire, 1978)
Chargaff's insights take on a deeper meaning when viewed in the context of McGilchrist's hemisphere hypothesis, and the consequences of LH capture that may result when the asymmetric relationship is inverted. And Xunzi was not the only one to have intuited this danger. For the Buddhist Hui-neng, "no thought" simply means "the seeing of all things with your mind without being tainted or attached to them." And Wang Yang-ming wrote that "people fail to realize that the highest good is in their minds and seek it outside." He appears to have interpreted the Diamond Sutra's advice to "let the mind function freely without abiding anywhere or in anything" to mean that "once it is realized that the highest good is in the mind and does not depend on any search outside, then the mind will have definite direction and there will be no danger of its becoming fragmentary, isolated, broken into pieces, mixed, or confused". This condition is precisely that which McGilchrist diagnosed in contemporary culture (though the etiology he describes is different). Hui-neng, Yang-ming, and the author of the Diamond Sutra were all specifically describing nonattachment. Unlike Xunzi, they didn't allude to the polarity between narrow and broad attention and its qualitative attributes, which Chargoff did most poetically, and McGilchrist via the neuropsychiatry (the neural correlates of the phenomenology).
People will often devote a lot of time trying to understand conscious awareness, when what they really should be looking at is inattentional blindness: neglect, denial, and indifference. If consciousness is the primary condition, then blindness (or unconsciousness) is the limit experience. So rather than explain the primary condition, the real mystery to be explained is where our attention is lacking. And of course, this is the entire raison d'etre of McGilchrist’s books; as usual, he is inverting the contemporary approach. As noted below, a 'failure to attend to' or a 'failure to permit to come into being' may be explained as a failure to inhibit the LH world (the opposing process) or a failure to facilitate the RH world (the primary condition). But moreover, perhaps blindness and neglect (and paralysis and perseveration) is a failure to maintain that generative tension between "both mutual potentiation and mutual inhibition" (TMWT).
Inhibition
"As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." - Proverbs 27:17
"The heart’s wave would never have risen up so beautifully in its cloud of spray, and become spirit, were it not for the grim old cliff of destiny standing in its way..." - Friedrich Hölderlin
McGilchrist references the role of inhibition throughout his work: “Inhibition at the neurophysiological level does not necessarily equate with inhibition at the functional level... the net result is functionally permissive.” (TMAHE) It "does not mean repression: research shows that activity inhibition is often associated with more, not less, physiological activation and expressive behaviour.” Consequently, “impairment of the right hemisphere’s capacity to inhibit the left hemisphere could result in functional interference…” (TMWT) “Inhibition is creative.” “Negation at one level can allow something at another level to flourish untrammelled.” “The inhibitory action of the corpus callosum enables the human condition. Delimitation is what makes something exist. Friction, for example, the very constraint on movement, is also what makes movement possible at all.” Incidentally, this could be the very root foundation for a McGilchristian perspective on daily exercise.
McGilchrist writes “In order to achieve many musical effects, whether between the singers in a choir, or the members of a string ensemble, or the two hands of a pianist, especially where there are fugal elements, discords, cross-rhythms and syncopations, it is equally vital for the performer to be sensitive to, and attentive to, one set of experiences, and simultaneously to be taken up in, and express, another, that may appear, at the local level, to be in conflict with it. We must inhibit one in order to inhabit the other.” (TMAHE) “[T]he creativity of experts was proportional to the degree of dominance of the right prefrontal cortex over the left. The results suggested that there was a direct, suppressive, effect on the left parietal cortex, while the activity of the right prefrontal cortex was facilitated. In expert artists only the right prefrontal cortex and right parietal cortex were activated, whereas in the novice group the activations were bilateral: it was suggested by the authors that in artists a transcallosal pathway was exerting inhibitory control of the right on the left prefrontal cortex.” (TMWT)
“...‘most cases of delusion’ are due to left hemisphere overactivity combined with right hemisphere underactivity. Since the relationship between the hemispheres is a dynamic one of reciprocal inhibition, it is in a sense irrelevant whether what happens is that the right hemisphere is underactive, or the left hemisphere is overactive, since the effect in either case is the same... Delusions have consistently been linked to either right hemisphere dysfunction or left hemisphere overactivity (or both).” Fascinatingly, “in the intact situation it is the will of the left hemisphere, at a more conscious level, that normally inhibits the will of the right.” (TMAHE) And again, “the left hemisphere is better able to inhibit the right hemisphere than the right is to inhibit the left.” (TMWT) Why is this? McGilchrist suggests “[T]he concerns of the left hemisphere with getting and using make it by nature competitive – it may be remembered that it is confident, unreasonably optimistic, unwitting of what goes on in the right hemisphere, and yet in denial about its own limitations.” (TMAHE) At first, this asymmetric capacity for inhibition appears to be an inversion of the master and emissary metaphorical description. After all, one might infer that a 'master' should be more capable than an 'emissary' in most regards. But the Tao Te Ching chapter 68 (Wing-Tsit Chan, 1963) suggests a deeper principle may be involved:
"A skillful leader of troops is not oppressive with his military strength. A skilful fighter does not become angry.
A skilful conqueror does not compete with people. One who is skilful in using men puts himself below them.
This is called the virtue of non-competing. This is called the strength to use men. This is called matching Heaven, the highest principle of old."
There are several different ways to view inhibition. Louis Sass writes about a debilitating form described by Neitzsche, who observed "how the logical side has become overdeveloped, where consciousness, the "dissuader and critic," replaces instinct as the dominant motivating force. Socrates epitomizes this aberrant condition and is described as hearing a quasi-divine voice that speaks to him as if from without - a voice that, as so often in schizophrenia, is a "purely inhibitory agent"; it "always spoke to dissuade." For such a person, command hallucinations, if they do occur, might actually serve as a way of escaping a dominant mood of anxious self-awareness and paralyzing ambivalence, a way of catapulting oneself out of more characteristically schizophrenic states of endless deliberation, vacillation, self-criticism, and doubt." ...So where does this leave us? Perhaps with the paradox that inhibition must also be able to inhibit itself, just as thinking must think against itself.
McGilchrist writes in
The Matter with Things: “...like the tzimtzum of
Ein-sof in creating the cosmos, there needs to be an emptying out, a receptive space so as to make a place for it to live: a primary act of negation. I have repeatedly emphasised the creative role of reciprocal inhibition in the brain.” It seems that McGilchrist is here suggesting that this mythic account of creation from Lurianic Kabbalah can be understood as a metaphor for "reciprocal inhibition" in the brain, or what Jonathan Rowson called the "
McGilchrist Manoeuvre". If that's right, then this comparison can productively inform our understanding of each of these. According to the myth, the first act of
Ein-Sof was to withdraw, to contract, in an act of self-abnegation.
According to McGilchrist, the 'right, left, right' move from the "presencing of a particular lived context (right hemisphere) to the re-presentation of that context into elements for analysis (left hemisphere) and then back into a perception of context" is a process whereby the "initial perception of context is enriched and enhanced". (This is also the familiar "
waters and mountains" verses of Zen Buddhism.) This imagery, of hemispheric inhibition and facilitation in a reciprocal cycle of withdrawal and approach, suggests the ebb and flow of waves washing over pebbles on a beach in the "
swash zone". (Examples:
looking down,
looking across.) With each pass the small rocks are picked up and rolled about, moving up and down the gently sloping beach. And through the imperceptibly slow processes of surface abrasion and polishing, they become smooth. (Incidentally, these same processes have produced the famous marimo balls of Lake Akan in Japan, though they are algae instead of rocks.) Continuing with this metaphor, the RH wave of fluid presencing washes over the LH firmament of solid stone. Each wave crashes on the beach, then (like
Ein-Sof) withdraws into the ocean. The stone fractures, and those fragments are pushed and pulled, alternately reintegrating back into the ocean and being left exposed to the light and air. Through countless cycles of this process the familiar appearance of the shoreline is created, enriching the quality of the beach to the benefit of both the organisms who live there and the people who visit.
Distance and division We have all seen how the way we view something changes over time. In a moment of embarrassment our friends may counsel us "some day you'll look back on all this and laugh." At other times we may have counseled others to exercise forbearance and restraint, "Don't make any rash, impulsive decisions. Sleep on it first." ...And ever notice how things become much clearer when you get a chance to just "get away from it all" for a while? Leave town and go on vacation. Take a week or two off. Try something new, or alternatively, maybe rekindle an old passion. A mid-day siesta or lunch provides a break in the day. Just enough distance from the work routine to re-energize before returning. My first employer, Duane Giarratana, made this point. At the time I thought a lunch break only needed to be as long as it took me to eat. When it comes to stimuli (affecting attention deficiency disorders, for example) increasing one's distance can reduce stress... and the desire for immediate gratification (distance as friction). In other words, it doesn't just 'make the heart grow fonder'. But one must find the frequency that works. If you can't take a good break
every day, then try ever other day, week, year, and so on. Get into the
rhythm right for you. (And trust. A highly variable cycle over the short term often reveals a more stable trend over the longer term.) Understandably, religious leaders need some distance as well. I once knew a Lutheran pastor who lived in a parsonage beside the church. He moved to a house on the hill a few miles away. He too needed the space, the psychological distance from work. That's certainly not without precedent. The followers of many religious traditions have long sought the quiet solitude of remote retreats.
This is a meditation on the importance of division, separation, and "necessary distance", in every sense of the word: space, time, and of course phenomenal experience. If our proximity to events is too close we risk losing the broader perspective and context that provides that essential feeling of ease and comfort in life, that enables better decision making. With distance comes depth. McGilchirst notes that the "relatively abstracted and virtual world" must be kept apart from the "immediate world of perceptual experience" if each is to work efficiently, "and yet together". But "insufficient separation of function results in an impairment". In what might appear to be a plot twist, the division of the brain into two hemispheres, according to McGilchrist, is chiefly for the benefit of the right hemisphere. After all, of the two hemispheres it is the one whose functions are more likely to be colonized by the other. Note the irony here: the hemisphere that gives us a holistic view on the world relies upon separation and distance for its very being, and thus do we as well. A world without division would neither have unity. What would become of our telic capacity without it? In the immortal words of the punk rock band The Offspring, "you gotta keep 'em separated".
“Ultimately I believe that many of the disputes about the nature of the human world can be illuminated by an understanding that there are two fundamentally different ‘versions’ delivered to us by the two hemispheres, both of which can have a ring of authenticity about them, and both of which are hugely valuable; but that they stand in opposition to one another, and need to be kept apart from one another – hence the bihemispheric structure of the brain.” - The Master and His Emissary
“The evolution of what I have called necessary distance actually brings one into connection with that from which one is appropriately distanced; it is not a distancing that separates. Necessary distance is what makes empathy possible. It would seem that this is what lies behind the importance of harmony, balance, equipoise... when we have been sufficiently detached to be looking at one another, but not yet so detached that we are inappropriately objective about, or alienated from, one another.”- The Master and His Emissary
“Those who have accompanied me on the trip so far will recognise in North American native myths, ancient Judaic wisdom and Chinese philosophical literature analogies to the myth enshrined in the title of The Master and his Emissary. Versions of this insight into the over-reaching nature of mere left hemisphere ‘intellect’ exist, in fact, in many cultures. (I put the word intellect in inverted commas because, as the reader will know, intellect must not be confused with intelligence, which it often lacks.) The insight is present in Rumi; it is present in the Jewish legend of the Golem; and versions are also found in Sanskrit literature including the Mahabharata. All of these, including The Secret of the Golden Flower, were unknown to me when I wrote that book. Yet these ancient insights were exactly where neurological research has led me.” - The Matter with Things
Concerning the many versions of this insight, in An Introduction to Comparative Philosophy, under the subheading "Proximity and Superimposition", Walter Benesch compares Samkhya (dualistic) and Advaita Vedanta (non-dualistic) schools, arriving at a conclusion that is remarkably similar to McGilchist's (dual-aspect monism), which derives from the position of the hemispheres "kept apart and yet together":
“I have tried to present two views of consciousness: One is dualistic and explains our experience and knowledge as the proximity of purusa and prakrti. The second is non-dualistic and explains knowledge and experience as a superimposition process of maya in a monistic Brahman/Atman continuum of intending and attending. I believe these assumptions and their various methods can be compatible, complementary, and ultimately essential to one another in our pursuit of understanding. When we stress the objects of experience as in natural science, then a dualistic view may prove initially more useful, but when we would understand the nature of the understanding of the scientist, of consciousness and its place in the totality of the world, then non-dualism would keep us from dividing ourselves and the world into irresolvable dichotomies. Hopefully, the application of these dualistic and non-dualistic views will become increasingly apparent as we now explore the subject and situational logics of the Jains, Nyäya, and Buddhist philosophers.”
According to Ferenc Ruzsa, "Sāṅkhya has a very long history. Its roots go deeper than textual traditions allow us to see," stating that "Sāṅkhya likely grew out of speculations rooted in cosmic dualism and introspective meditational practice." The dualism is rooted in agricultural concepts of the union of the male sky-god and the female earth-goddess. Dualistic philosophical speculations also appear in the "
allegory of two birds" hymn. The two birds have been interpreted to mean various forms of dualism: "the sun and the moon", "the body and the atman", and the "two seekers of different kinds of knowledge". That reference to different kinds of knowledge suggests parallels with McGilchrist's
presentation of hemispheric differences.
Two Birds with fair wings, knit with bonds of friendship, embrace the same tree.
One of the twain eats the sweet fig; the other not eating keeps watch.
Where those fine Birds hymn ceaselessly their portion of life eternal, and the sacred synods,
There is the Universe's mighty Keeper, who, wise, hath entered into me the simple.
The tree on which the fine Birds eat the sweetness, where they all rest and procreate their offspring,
Upon its top they say the fig is sweetest, he who does not know the Father will not reach it.
Distance and division are ideas that are antagonistic to the contemporary zeitgeist, which values the qualities of being close to and in union with that which is sought. But the indirect route to bringing one into connection is not only preferable (on the account of Taoists at least), it is arguably embedded within the structure of reality itself. In his paper "Sophisticated Inference", Karl Friston described how "with a greater planning horizon [that is, with greater spatiotemporal depth, distance, or perspective], local minima are vitiated, and we are able to plan and execute the shortest path to our ultimate goal, which often [counterintuitively] involves excursions through state (and belief) space that point away from them." As he wrote, if our planning horizon is insufficient to contemplate distal outcomes, we can easily get stuck as we pursue our goals. A chess player must evaluate their actions in light of possible outcomes, and think several moves ahead, as would a seraphic master or a mountain sage. The ability to imagine situations that are remote from us in space and time is critical to break free from positive feedback loops.
We can observe how the structure of language and representational thought imposes upon us certain logical oppositions. There are many examples of these: union/division, static/dynamic, and so on. (This insight was described in the second chapter of the Tao Te Ching.) But outside of our representational tools, is there any reality to these opposing aspects? This, in large part, is the question to which McGilchrist applied himself when writing TMWT. And he points to many sources of scientific evidence suggesting that opposing qualities are fundamentally constituent elements of reality. Furthermore, these tend to display qualitative asymmetries. So I think we can justifiably say that hemispheric asymmetry is indeed logically related to an elementary grammar of reality. Before looking at the religious implications of that relationship, a note on exegesis.
Wherever there are two or more interpretations of a religious text or doctrine, McGilchrist invariably appears to select the one which best supports the hemisphere theory (for obvious reasons). So how he understands North American native myths, Sanskrit literature, Judaic wisdom, Christian mysticism, and Eastern philosophy may not always be the same way in which contemporary adherents of these traditions understand it. But that said, his interpretation may actually be very consistent, even by their own admission. The point is that, regardless of consistency, choosing to see the philosophical foundations of the hemisphere theory reflected in religion (or vice versa) is entirely fair if we assume that these share a common intuition, or a common origin in 'cosmic evo-devo'. Many religious schools of thought, such as process theology, emerged from similar motivations. Extended far enough, such heterodox approaches tend to force us to reconsider doctrinal interpretations, depending on how firmly those are held. So there may be consequences.
McGilchrist, the political radical
"Is left hemisphere capture a waste?" Any such judgment is likely going to be contingent upon whether the process of the
McGilchrist Manoeuvre is allowed to continue or not - it depends on the "next steps" taken (or failed to be taken, as the case may be). And it is similar to the situation of the '
farmer and his horse'. I'll share the following passages taken from
The Master and His Emissary to examine this a bit more, and look at some perhaps counterintuitive implications:
“[F]rom within Heidegger's own philosophy there emerge grounds to suppose that the situation is not beyond remedy. He quoted with approval Hölderlin's lines: Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst / Das Rettende auch (‘Where there is danger, that which will save us also grows’). How I understand this in relation to the brain is this… Within the realm of the left hemisphere (‘where there is danger’) there is also the possibility of an ‘unfolding’ of what is implicit, which, if returned to the right hemisphere, will lead to something greater and better coming forward (‘that which will save us’). …The work of the left hemisphere done, the thing ‘returns’ to the right hemisphere positively enriched… It is only out of the unity of division and unity that a new unity comes: so unity melds with its opposite and yet becomes more itself.”
“Nietzsche claimed that the constant opposition between these two very different tendencies led to a fruitful incitement to further and ever higher levels of life and creativity (which accords with the evidence of the relationship between the two hemispheres at its best).” McGilchrist earlier notes: “I expressed this in terms of Hegel's Aufhebung, the essential point being that something new, that was not present before, comes into being through the process, not negating the earlier stages, but transforming them.”
However: “The Master makes himself vulnerable to the emissary, and the emissary can choose to take advantage of the situation, to ignore the Master. It seems that its nature is such that it is prone to do so, and it may even, mistakenly, see the right hemisphere's world as undoing its work, challenging its ‘supremacy’.” And so: "The ‘danger’ inherent in the process is the potential arrogance of the left hemisphere, which may not allow the return: it may come to think of itself as all in all.”
Our contemporary society is precisely one of LH capture, a world in which most of the asymmetries have been inverted. And this could have some important implications for how we view inequality and social justice (though opinions may differ here). For example, the relationships of status and prestige, and the remuneration provided workers in the vast majority of occupations, are likely to have been inverted to some degree or other. We should expect to find that those at the top and bottom of the pay scale, and those accorded the lowest and highest prestige within society, are reversed from the proper order. We've got it all backwards. As the author of the book of Matthew wrote, "so the last shall be first, and the first last."
And correspondingly, in a society captured by the LH where these positions are reversed, there may be a lot of confusion in how we talk about this. We must be careful. For example, McGilchrist helpfully clarifies how one should read Hegel: “Hegel is using the term ‘master’ here to refer to the usurping force that I associate with the left hemisphere – in other words to the emissary turned despot, known as the ‘major’ hemisphere – and the ‘slave’ to refer to the true Master, ill-treated by the usurper, which I associate with the right hemisphere, the ‘silent’ or ‘minor’ hemisphere.” ...In contemporary Western society, it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that those who are treated as slaves are faced with a struggle to challenge the supremacy of an arrogant, plutocratic minority that has chosen to ignore them. Or rather than challenge, to transform the system into something altogether new for the benefit of all. Some conservatives have claimed McGilchrist as one of their own. Progressives have done the same, and this 'radical reading of McGilchrist' suggests one reason why. But ultimately, simple political divisions fail here.
Opponent process theory suggests that there is always some tension between the hemispheres, and this is kept at a manageable level when lines of authority are clear, as when that authority rests with the rightful Master, or even conversely in the case of a LH insurrection where authority now predominantly rests with the Emissary. (Of course, the insurrection transforms the tension from productive to destructive, both for the individual and society.) But what about the possibility of intermediary states where the master/emissary relationship has been disturbed, but not yet completely inverted, and the asymmetry is merely reduced? I would suggest that at these times the tension between the hemispheres would be greatest, as would be the internal conflict within the individual. Such a person might experience significant attention and self regulation problems, and one's actions would frequently appear to violate, or be misaligned with, one's stated values, causing difficult to manage cognitive dissonance upon reflection. McGilchrist has noted that "no two things are ever equal", and so perhaps this is why he primarily describes the hemispheres in either their regular or inverted relations, and not in an equal relationship with regard to authority. Though he has noted that symmetric hemispheres are correlated with a number of psychological disorders. All the same, one might surmise that the "limit case of equality/symmetry" would at least be approached as the threat of insurrection increases (or as the Master begins to reclaim authority). At such times, careful introspection (and extrospection) may be needed to back away from the precipice.
Recall that old aphorism about how "power corrupts'', and regardless of whether that is necessarily so, it may nonetheless be true in some sense that the power to manipulate the world may be a kind of intoxicating and potentially self deluding power which blinds us if left unrestrained, and for this reason it is going to tend to be antagonistic to wisdom. This kind of power the Master cannot have if it is to fulfill its role. Why? The Master must be in touch with reality. This is the Master's principle virtue and raison d'etre. If the Master incorporated a quality that placed it at risk of losing its capacity for 'presencing', then all would truly be lost. And yet, manipulation of the world is necessary, at the very least for evolutionary reasons, so an Emissary who wields such power is a necessity. And thus the Master must be vulnerable, or be no Master at all. As has been shown many times, the LH and RH embody entirely incommensurable ways of being that are nonetheless paradoxically united.
McGilchrist tries to clarify our situation: “In other words’, writes Barbara Goodrich, ‘the whole system of the brain is cooperating so as to permit the different frequencies not to entrain each other'... And she continues: “In summary, Buzsáki views the mammalian organism as the most complex system of nature’s devising, one which is built from elements relying on opposing forces, including... the non-predictability of non-linear interactions among neurons kept in a metastable condition.” Balance needs to be constantly disturbed and restored.”
Indeed, this entire arrangement appears to encourage a kind of metastable equilibrium. Our vulnerability to delusion, LH capture, and all manner of misfortunes seems consistent with maintaining this metastability, which despite these obvious drawbacks must also confer some advantages. Perhaps the cliff edge is, paradoxically, the safest location. Recall that Taronhiawagon "comes to understand that it is right that he maintain a small distance from his brother, while at the same time keeping his attention upon him, neither letting him drift too far from his awareness, nor letting him blend with him." And it may not be so much that the RH "lets the left hemisphere enjoy its delusions without interfering", so much as the LH has the power to inhibit what the RH has to say. Now if, for whatever reason, the Master did have the power to "verbalize its worldview for all the world to hear", on the one hand, that metastability would be lost. But more importantly, and philosophically, verbalization (representation) of the RH worldview (presentation) is precisely what cannot be done - it is impossible to put that into words without losing it in the process.
 |
We may need some "necessary distance".
|
The Paradox of Practice
The doctrine of
hongaku (innate enlightenment) was itself developed out of the more familiar “Buddha-nature” doctrine. There are two interrelated observations to make in connection with this: the relationship with the hemisphere hypothesis, and the relationship to practice. Concerning the hemispheres, because it accepts all things as expressions of original Buddha nature, the LH criticism of hongaku is that it would therefore also support the status quo and legitimate social injustice. But, from the RH standpoint, these paradoxically coinciding opposites (of justice and injustice, or delusion and enlightenment, etc.) can be seen to be in some sense mutually entailed. Though of course this doesn’t go far enough, as McGilchrist draws our attention to the contextual asymmetry involved in mutual entailment, which brings the terrain into still more full relief.
(Side note: It is one of the most pernicious and unfortunate features of the delusion we see in contemporary culture that we are blind in regard to
asymmetry. This is the result of a relentless, and misplaced, desire for equivalence along with a simple inability to recognize values, but this is a
false equivalence. Any tradition that recognizes axiology and a "sense of the sacred" is able to discern asymmetry. It is there in the 'mountains and waters' verses of Zen Buddhism. It is also there in the Tao Te Ching: "the best (person) is like water... There is nothing softer and weaker than water, and yet there is nothing better for attacking hard and strong things." But if we only look at the most popular taijitu depiction of yin and yang, then the deeper asymmetry within Taoism remains hidden. If our form of attention is such that we habitually mistake a part of the whole for the entirety (though it is only one part), then we "strive against the Tao", or in other words, we have been "captured by the LH".
McGilchrist also noted "Heraclitus said that ‘war is the father of all and king of all’, but I would add that peace must be their mother and queen; and for all to come about, war and peace need to be at peace to the degree that permits some form of union — not simply at war.")
The ‘paradox of Buddha-nature’ can inform our views on the ‘paradox of practice’. While we may need a practice that involves a ‘negation of the LH egocentric self’ in order to free ourselves and allow our ‘true RH self’ to become actualised, this does have overtones of LH instrumentalism, the "purely functional understanding of practice as a means to an end". That’s something McGilchrist remarked on as well, parodied as "mindfulness to be a better stock broker". It’s a real danger. From the perspective of hongaku, or “what an enlightened person is supposed to see”, there is “nothing to practice and nothing to achieve”. But, as noted, this has overtones of ‘false equivalence’, which is a pernicious LH bias. Here's the paradox: for a practice to be effective, it must use the tools of the LH against the LH itself. For example, in the process of liberating oneself from suffering (or at least from the "unsatisfactoriness of mundane life") one very often comes to realize that the problem has as much to do with the way the problem is conceived to begin with (that is, how we attend to it) as it has to do with anything else.
So how do we resolve the ‘paradox of practice’? Both statements are true: (1) We need to free ourselves from delusion and “renounce Satan”, as it were, and (2) There’s really nothing ‘to achieve’. We must at some point “
dismount the ass”, as Joshu put it, and see our inherent Buddha-nature. Our choice of action can only be decided with reference to our unique context, because that will inform us concerning which approach is most appropriate. And it usually doesn’t proceed in some sort of linear ‘series’ of steps. Just as often these processes occur more or less simultaneously, in a co-developmental way, in ‘parallel’ as it were, a ratcheting process of both the seeing and the doing advancing hand in hand together. And there is no map that can adequately guide us for any of this.
There’s much to say. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about apranihita in The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: "There is nothing to attain, no program, no agenda. There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We already have everything we are looking for. All the elements for happiness are already here." Once monks have realised enlightenment it is expected that they will spontaneously want to do the right thing. This seems to be McGilchrist’s view as well. In both his books and conversations with others, he places emphasis on the importance of “seeing” and relatively less on “doing”. This view, shared by both Zen and McGilchrist, has been articulated by many others as well, including Donella Meadows (described in her leverage points paper) and more recently Nora Bateson:
“When perception shifts with a group of people, you don't have to ask “What should we do?” The “what to do” happens. When people are making sense of their world in a different set of ways, with different premises, the whole selection of options changes.”
https://youtu.be/g5wyy97hvN8?t=2864Neil Theise: “While we feel ourselves to be thinking, living beings with independent lives inside the universe, the complementary view is also true: we don’t live in the universe; we embody it. It’s just like how we habitually think of ourselves as living on the planet even as, in a complementary way, we are the planet.”
Maria Popova writes that “Theise leans on a centerpiece of quantum theory: Neils Bohr’s notion of complementarity — the idea that because two different reads on reality can both be true but not at the same time, to describe reality we must choose between the two in order to keep the internal validity and coherence of one from interfering with that of the other." For Theise there is a complementarity between division and unity. One is an individual and yet part of the greater whole of the Earth. For McGilchrist there is a complementarity between the form of attention deployed by the left hemisphere and that of the right hemisphere. And that's the core of the hemi-sphere hypothesis. There’s no causal connection between these analogies, however they do reference similar language -
hemisphere and ecosphere - a poetic coincidence that a writer more skillful than I might find use for. Neri Oxman also described how she is bringing complementarity into design:
Neri Oxman: “When you think about a “product”, when you think about a shoe or a chair or a perfume or a building, you don't stop at the object. You want to go all the way to the system. Again, instead of designing objects, or singular embodiments of the will of the designer, you're really tapping into an entire system that is interconnected… It's really important to understand the product in the context of the ecological system from which it's sourced and how it's designed. And that is the kind of thinking that is not only desired, but is required if we are to achieve synergy between humanity and nature.”
Lex Fridman: “And it's interesting, because the system level thinking is almost always going to take you to the entire Earth, to considering the entire Earth ecosystem.”
Neri Oxman: “Which is why it's important to have a ‘left brain’ and a ‘right brain’ competing for attention. An ‘intimacy-ion’ [portmanteau of intimacy and competition?].”
The role that the observer plays in the selection, interpretation, and utilization of scientific theories is of central importance to Thomas Kuhn. He argued for a 'third position' that elided the simple categories of relativism and absolutism (roughly synonymous to realism and nominalism). As Cornelis de Waal wrote: "Whereas the nominalist claims that only individuals are real, the realist holds that relations are as real as the individual objects they relate." There is "revolutionary science" occurring today, for examples I'd point to McGilchrist's study of brain lateralization (The Master and his Emissary), Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics (Helgoland), Hoffmeyer's biosemiotics (Signs of Meaning in the Universe), and Friston's active inference framework based on the free energy principle (which has been described as "a nuanced form of realism"). It is interesting to note that how these thinkers are interpreted, and whether they are held in low or high regard, depends on the characteristics of the currently ascendant paradigm. The rise of perspectivism, as we near the second quarter of the 21st century, is finally showing signs of eclipsing the nominalism of the 20th century.
Those who criticize these bodies of work from a nominalist paradigm inevitably find them largely unintelligible, and their arrows fail to reach their target, but from a perspectivist paradigm they often can be seen to provide a more coherent explanation of evidence, accounting for apparent anomalies under the dominant nominalist paradigm. This isn't to say that such work is without errors, but that those errors are rarely exposed and addressed without understanding the relevant paradigm within which the work is situated. Kuhn famously argued that the accumulation of a sufficient number of anomalies can trigger a crisis leading to a paradigm shift. This is what appears to be occurring today - a shift back to a form of perspectival science that better accounts for the role of observers. "The one thing I think you shouldn't say is that now we've found out what the world is really like," Kuhn said in one of his last interviews, "because that's not what I think the game is about." There are several complementary perspectives upon the world, but no absolute answers.
No comments:
Post a Comment