Referring to the metaphor popularized by Iain McGilchrist, if we were to ask "Why is the Master vulnerable to the Emissary? ...Why is the right hemisphere vulnerable to left hemisphere capture?" I think the answer has several parts. Each hemisphere has deficits which the opposing hemisphere is able to compensate for. But these contrasting features of the hemispheres align in such a way as to make the potential for LH capture possible. Could they have been arranged in a different way, so as to mitigate the threat of LH capture? Consider that the capacity for presentation (to flowing ineffable animacy), and the capacity for representation (of fixed graspable things), appear to be incommensurable ways of attending.
Nonetheless, we find them paradoxically united within us (and speculate that this is a manifestation of some deeper truth regarding the complementarity of opposites throughout the cosmos). When we look closely, we see that there may be something inherent to the capacity for LH representation that makes it vulnerable to entering into positive feedback loops that fragment the Gestalt of agents, transforming them into "things". By comparison, the inverse (and asymmetric) capacity for RH presentation does not have this same vulnerability because it is able to maintain negative feedback loops and allostatic regulation.
On the one hand, the master cannot keep the emissary on too short of a leash, otherwise it would not have the opportunity to be a good servant. But on the other hand, provide too long of a leash and the emissary may betray you. There’s a happy medium somewhere between these extremes. And discovering where that is may be a process of trial and error. Perhaps this necessary learning process is why the master must place its trust in the emissary. Making itself vulnerable to the emissary's inherent instability is in some sense unavoidable. And thus LH capture via processes of cascading positive feedbacks may simply be the result of erring too far on one side of that equation. Letting out too much rope as it were. “Give someone enough rope, and they will hang themselves”. …McGilchrist addressed the danger of positive feedback in TMAHE:
“One way of thinking of this is in terms of feedback systems. Most biological systems seek homeostasis: if they move too far in one direction, they stabilise themselves by self-correction. This is ‘negative feedback’, the most familiar example of which is the operation of a thermostat: if the temperature constantly tends to drop, the thermostat triggers a heating system that will act to bring the temperature back to the desired level. However, systems can become unstable and enter a situation in which ‘positive feedback’ obtains – in other words, a move in one direction, rather than producing a move in the opposite direction, serves to promote further moves in the same direction, and a snowballing effect occurs. The right hemisphere, then, is capable of freeing us through negative feedback. The left hemisphere tends to positive feedback, and we can become stuck.”
“This is not unlike the difference between the normal drinker and the addict. After a certain point, the normal drinker begins to feel less like another drink. What makes an addict is the lack of an ‘off switch’ – another drink only makes the next, and the next, more likely. And, interestingly enough, lesions of the frontolimbic systems, mainly in the right hemisphere, are associated with addictive behaviour. Pathological gamblers, for example, have frontal deficits which are mainly right-sided; by contrast, in cocaine addicts, for example, stimulating the right prefrontal cortex reduces craving for cocaine. And denial, a left-hemisphere speciality, is typical of addiction.”
“I believe that we have entered a phase of cultural history in which negative feedback between the products of action of the two hemispheres has given way to positive feedback in favour of the left hemisphere. Despite the primacy of the right hemisphere, it is the left hemisphere that has all the cards and, from this standpoint, looks set to win the game.” […] “Instead of a corrective swing of the pendulum, therefore, there is a loss of homeostasis, and the result is positive feedback, whereby the left hemisphere's values simply become further entrenched. (...it only discovers more of what it already knows, and it only does more of what it already is doing.)” […] “[Anthony Giddens] sees a dangerous form of positive feedback, whereby theoretical positions, once promulgated, dictate the reality that comes about, since they are then fed back to us through the media, which form, as much as reflect, reality.”
In short, an inter-hemispheric positive feedback loop can be entered between the hemispheres whenever the LH constructs the world to which the RH presences, and this can reinforce or supplement the intra-hemispheric positive feedback loop to which the LH is already prone. To escape LH capture we need to break out of these nihilistic feedback loops. Are we able to intervene proactively, or are we resigned to a more reactive stance of harm reduction? Characterizing LH capture in this way was recently done in conversations with Charles Eisenstein and Philip Goyal. Daniel Schmachtenberger also referenced it with the term “runaway dynamic”. Erica Thompson, Zak Stein, Tristan Harris, Donella Meadows, and many others addressed it as well. It's a centrally important way of approaching this subject.
Bernard Tannett also described "the self-contained inner connectivity of the left hemisphere, trapped as it is in its own positive feedback loop." As he put it, "a combination of hemispheric inequalities and recent cultural history" are undermining the hierarchy of attention. These inequalities are the asymmetry of means, structure, and interaction. And it's the last of these, the asymmetry of interaction, that seems most significant. Tannett again: "The left hemisphere has transformed negative feedback loops into positive proof of its own invincibility. In earlier times the left hemisphere's 'will to power' was counterbalanced by forces outside of its closed and self-referential system, but under modernity the routes of escape from the virtual world of the left hemisphere are being closed off."
There's an important link here to Gestalt perception, which is necessary for both understanding and addressing issues of global significance. We particularly see this in the context of any discussion about the threat of environmental harms, the decline and potential collapse of social structures and civilization, and so on. Compromised Gestalt perception may be the single greatest obstacle facing a civilization such as ours, composed of diverse groups some of which are attempting to escape our capture by the left hemisphere (or at least raise the issue). Because without the ability to perceive ‘the whole’ one is blind to the threat of its dissolution. Furthermore, to those for whom it does not exist, the attempt to address its loss therefore has no meaning. It is simply incoherent. Once a society is entrapped and blinded in this way, and without a sufficient compensatory response to address the loss of the whole, corrosive feedbacks inexorably compound. In the end it only becomes harder to extricate ourselves. And impaired Gestalt perception might also explain a lot of odd behaviors, such as a tendency to “cherry pick”, or only highlight fragmentary aspects of reality. Not only does cherry picking serve to confirm one’s preferred theory (in contrast to actual reality), but it also becomes much easier when one is already blind to the larger whole to begin with, to the Gestalt that would have easily contradicted said theory were one only able to perceive it. Such behavior is exactly what one might expect from someone captured by the left hemisphere.
When we think of positive feedback loops we tend to see these as “runaway” feedbacks of “cascading“ interactions that are continually speeding up faster and faster. And indeed our contemporary age has been called the "Age of Acceleration". But in the case of left hemisphere capture, this is an acceleration that brings us to the point of immobility, to perseveration, and to the "catatonic paralysis of overdeliberation and self-consciousness" per Louis Sass. Note the contradiction here. The trapped person imagines they are free because they are moving faster, but they're actually going nowhere; the first paradox. Consider the visually arresting metaphor of the "fixed stare" as described by McGilchrist:
"The idea of a fixed stare (of the Gorgon, or of the basilisk, for example) that immobilises and kills is embedded in the mythology of, certainly, Western cultures going back to the Minoan civilisation. It is also relevant (a topic that I have explored elsewhere) that when we find ourselves to be objects of attention, we respond to the quality of attention to which we are subjected, and experience ourselves as transformed by it: when we are stared at, we feel ourselves immobilised, which is perhaps why prey seem – and indeed are – transfixed, as we put it, by their predators. ...knowledge, as an instrument of human progress’, writes physicist Claudio Ronchi, ‘can become, like the Gorgon, a goddess that transmutes anyone who gazes upon her into stone. ...closing down to narrow attention is what needs to be avoided, whether by depriving the serial-processing left hemisphere of time, or by distracting its Gorgon stare elsewhere.”
Although the stare is dangerous, it is strangely irresistible; the second paradox. Any connection to the modern Panopticon? It may not be surprising to see John M. Hoberman write that "Sartre's primary interest is to show the fact of human freedom and the flight from freedom, the nostalgia of the for-itself for the condition of the in-itself (a nonhuman stasis). The temptation, as Kierkegaard points out in the second journal entry on vertigo, is to construe a pressure that comes from within as one that comes from without. To avoid anguish and vertigo, says Sartre, it is necessary "that I apprehend in myself a strict psychological determinism." Kierkegaard is far less interested both in the illusion that such a determinism represents and in the attendant wish to reify oneself. It is not Kierkegaard but Sartre, with his affinity for images of petrification, whose gaze is transfixed by the Biblical "heart of stone."
Now that we've read about this immobilizing stare, and its attraction for those like Sartre, let's connect this back to the asymmetries of means, structure, and interaction (as succinctly laid out by
Bernard Tannett) that are making escape from the 'Brave New (virtual) World' we are in very difficult. A important thing to note about this stare is that you need to anticipate it. Because, according to the myth, once you are transfixed it is too late. You are dead. You can no longer intervene. The left hemisphere's desire for stasis has trapped you in a positive feedback loop. So is there anything that can provide the leverage needed to oppose this? What can allow one to break free from "the self-contained inner connectivity of the left hemisphere, trapped as it is in its own positive feedback loop”? How does one re-engage in the "
McGilchrist Manoeuvre", that "movement or series of moves requiring skill and care", per Jonathan Rowson?
Many forms of mental health therapy (CBT, mindfulness, philosophical counseling, religious practices, “kairotic knots” etc.) might be seen as attempts to return to a process oriented psychology, or a way of living that prevents stasis, and thereby productively addresses the blindness, denial, and neglect that negatively affects quality of life. But therapeutic interventions, if primarily reactive, may not work after one is already caught in the trap, consumed by addiction, or turned to stone. Do “thought stopping" techniques resist positive feedback, or "thought accelerating" techniques reveal their ultimate futility? A more proactive, preventative approach may be needed, one involving embodied therapies of practice. To be sure, that may involve many of those "reactive" therapies as well. Preventing left hemisphere capture in the long term may require an approach of radical embodiment and movement. For example, a meditative practice involving fine motor skills, such as calligraphy, both encourages one to release excessive tension and have a more fluid relationship with the world. But more generally, perhaps simply learning how to cycle between a more RH way of attending (freedom from "Gorgon stare") and a more LH way of attending (the fixed stare) can allow us to navigate the world of experience in a healthier way. Perhaps there are times to "release the kraken/gorgon/basilisk", and then there are times to rein in it's petrifying stare.
Confronting stasis (and illusory movement) with
real movement, the movement back to "attention to the field as a whole", movement back into Chargaff's darkness, movement back to the right hemisphere, seems possible. A more explicit form of process or “movement therapy” may be a bit broader than “cognitive therapy“. I'd like to reintegrate this into those three asymmetries of means, structure, and interaction. Beginning with the last, movement applied to the 'asymmetry of interaction' is the return to healthy forms of allostatic regulation and right hemisphere
negative feedback, which mitigates positive feedback loops. Movement applied to the 'asymmetry of structure' is the raison d'etre of Zak Stein's
axiological design. Consider the "three things that make us fully human, and make us fulfilled:
belonging to a cohesive social group, belonging in the natural world, and belonging in the spiritual world", how do our designed structures and environments interact with these? And movement applied to the 'asymmetry of means' might suggest that our means (language, logic, linearity, etc.) should always remain
transparent to deeper meaning, and not overly literal, opaque, and ossified. ...The paradox we encounter is that to really rest (or achieve any of the goals of the Slow Movement) one must be able to move.
To what extent is the Gorgon fixed stare a metaphor for the left hemisphere’s objectifying form of attention? To what extent might it be an observable feature of various forms of interaction along a neurodiverse spectrum, to a greater or lesser degree? (Maybe McGilchrist is referring to the fixed stare in both the literal and the metaphorical sense.) Is it possible to design one's life, or the culture and civilization to which one belongs, in such a way that stasis and the "fixed stare" never gain a firm hold? The fixed stare immobilises; it turns people into objects. And so if we interact with others in ways that are consistent with the "ethics of care", consistent with virtue ethics and supportive of a cohesive social group, then we can better resist that objectification. Such ethical approaches take relationality as central. And they tend to resist the opposing tendency toward fragmentation.
The sociopathic fixed stare can be seen when, knowingly or not, we view others as just another tool we can manipulate, that can serve some use for us. The judgement and evaluation is implicit, and the verdict has been rendered: life owes you something. Entitlement. Privilege. It happens
when we expect something from others, and so we stare. Just waiting until we get the response that we want and are looking for, which is often an expectation of assent, praise, or some other ego gratifying validation that we are smart, funny, or valued in some way. "What do you want, a pat on the back?" It can feel both too intense and too expectant. The other feels uncomfortable and objectified by being placed into a role of serving someone who feels entitled. Curiously, that feeling of
entitlement is blind and completely lacks any self-awareness. It feels genuinely miffed and affronted when it isn't bowed or curtsied to. No human or animal wants to be stared at, nor do they want to show obeisance. Why recognize another's unearned feeling of entitlement? Nature's way is to be grateful for anything we receive. Only the fool expects something in return. The onus is on you; the response is yours to give or intiate, not to take or passively receive from others. "You know what to do. Stop waiting for others to do it for you and just do it yourself!" Or as McGilchrist
described what amounts to appropriate
self-care: "Accept responsibility for yourself and your life". And when others do provide,
show gratitude and appreciation. There is a fine line between expecting goodwill in the context of an ethic of care and reciprocity, and expecting it as a "matter of course" and taking it for granted. (Compared to
prior ages, is this an age of entitlement? The
evidence is still being evaluated.)
McGilchrist recommends preventing the fixed stare through 'deprivation and distraction', or in other words, moving on to something else. And in social contexts, this might help relieve some of those long, pregnant pauses that can give the impression we are "fishing for the right response" from someone else. If the response we want is not spontaneously forthcoming, it will certainly lack any authenticity if it is coerced. Deprivation and distraction forecloses the possibility of a prolonged, fixed, immobilizing form of attention. And in its absence the ethics of care may be better able to grow and flourish. McGilchrist's advice for how to address an immobilizing, "stuck" form of attention is just one part of his larger project to return to the more fluid world and balancing feedbacks of the right hemisphere. And I think it's helpful to describe how, in a very wuwei manner, by staring expectantly one may actually prevent the reception of that which one would gladly receive (unless, like a predator, all you want is a dead and lifeless thing, in which case this is probably the recommended approach). Maybe understanding our subjective experience of the emissary's petrifying stare, from both the giving and receiving end of it, can help us break free.
Taken out of context, deprivation and distraction have a lot of negative connotations and not a lot to recommend for them. But viewed within the context of avoiding closing down to narrow attention they seem to make sense. Of the two, distraction seems the least appealing given its association with attentional problems. And since that is a major concern for McGilchrist as well, it does seem odd to hear him suggest this might be helpful. But recall that it is the context that makes all the difference. If it is possible to "think against thinking" per Heidegger, then perhaps we can "distract from distraction". That is the sense I get here. What distracts us in this beneficial way? A capacity for thinking several moves ahead to outcomes remote from us in space and time, for attending to this telic depth (or larger cognitive light cone per Michael Levin) and, crucially, taking the responsibility to fulfill it. It's not the narrow attention that needs to be avoided so much as the closing down to it when we forget this. This "closing" is synonymous with stasis, immobilisation, LH capture, and so on.
Postscript: For the most part, the hemispheres do the same things, but it is how they do them that is different. Regarding this "how", I think we can say that each hemisphere functions in a predominantly inverse capacity to that of the other. So for example, taking the idea of power/weakness, for the LH power is understood as direct, explicit, manipulation of the world (to impose one's agency). But for the RH power is precisely the inverse of this, it is the power to permit (to recognize another's agency). This inversion extends to almost every quality, which we can see in the list of "twenty contrasting features of the brain hemispheres". So when McGilchrist writes "the right hemisphere places itself in a position of vulnerability [submission] to the left" we can understand this in two different ways. If power means imposing one's agency, then the RH has less power. But if power is recognizing another's agency, then vulnerability may mean greater power.
