Heroes Not Zombies

Here’s how our brain works…..all the signals from our environment, and from within our own body, flow up from our sensory organs, through a vast network of nerve fibres to the right cerebral hemisphere which then hands off the information to the left hemisphere. The job of the left is to abstract, to focus on parts, to label and categorise. In short, to re-cognise, in order to help us grasp, both physically and mentally, the world, so we can manipulate it. The left hemisphere, having done its job hands back its work to the right which contextualises it all….puts it all back into the vast web of connections which the left extracted it from….so we can see the whole, so we can see the connections and relationships.

The left hemisphere fundamentally creates a re-presentation of reality. It’s a map, a model, an abstracted layer. It’s not actual reality. The right deals with reality as a whole.

OK, that’s all a vast over-simplification of the process, but it gives you a basic understanding of why we need both halves of the brain – it’s not a matter of one side good, the other bad. They do different jobs and we need them to work together.

But there’s just one more nuance to lay out here – they are not equal. The right hemisphere should be in charge. Iain McGilchrist’s thesis in the Master and His Emissary, is that we have developed cultures and ways of thinking where we give greatest credence to the left hemisphere….even to the extent of dismissing what the right can tell us. This separates us. It’s separates us from each other and from the rest of the world. It’s not real.