Turning to the other side of the brain, the story is quite different. All the entries reflect the dominance of the right hemisphere and all are situation specific. The context of the setting is important, as any action is fitted to the immediate circumstances, unlike routines or habits, which are based on already established (in the left) patterns. The left hemisphere plays a part in most of these types of behaviors, offering up suggestions of responses it believes fit the situation, including options that may not. The right side can either accept or reject these inputs. The ability to say… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Myth of the Self (2): The Left’s World
Before you read this, you should read the prior post, if you haven’t already. What I say below requires that you have looked at the two tables and the previous discussion. I do believe that the categorization of the behaviors is consistent with the brand features of the divided-brain-model (very left-hemisphere comment). The idea of self (singular) would signify some unitary being, acting metaphorically like a machine, run by a program that can produce a variety of distinctive behaviors. Distinctive according to some criteria that an observer might use to describe an action, but arising from a common mechanism. One’s… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Myth of The Self (1)
I have just completed a course at the lifelong learning institution I belong to about three novels of displacement. Basically they are about how people respond after suddenly being transported from a world in which they have been acculturated to a completely different one. One was The Hunger Angel, by Herta Müller, a Nobel laureate in literature. It’s about an ethnic-German Romanian man who is removed to a Russian labor camp during WWII, and describes how he survives there during the 4-5 years he is interned. Another is Primo Levi’s, Survival in Auschwitz, an actual recounting of his experience. Other… Read More
Continue ReadingSay No to Virtual Reality
The promises of virtual reality are coming slower than expected. Even Metaverse (formerly Facebook) has reported poorer than expected progress. As well it should because we are not at all ready for such new technologies. We have yet to learn how to cope with real reality, much less something beyond it. If new technology could ever be the answer to dealing with large and significant social/environmental problems, it must first enable us to see the world and ourselves as they really are. What we really need is a clearer understanding about how we humans perceive and act within the world… Read More
Continue ReadingOriginalism and Textualism Are Hoaxes
Amy Coney Barrett said in her Senate testimony that the Constitution has “the meaning that it had at the time people ratified it.” No. The Constitution Document and the words it contains have no meaning at all. A piece of text has as many possible meanings as there are people reading it. Only humans can create meaning from texts or spoken words. That is true of individual words and the sentences made from them. Much mischief has been done by conflating the written or spoken word with some inherent or essential meaning. The founding document “doesn’t change over time,” Barrett… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Only Real Option To Save the Planet
“The world is running out of options to hit climate goals, U.N. report shows” Is this headline from the WaPo (April 4, 2022) correct? I do not believe so. This old “joke” may help understand why. A policeman goes to help a drunk searching for something under a streetlight and asks what he has lost. He says his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes, the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, “No, I lost them in the park.” The policeman asks why he is searching… Read More
Continue ReadingAnd then they came for me
Another rejected oped. I have been trying to get McGilchrist and the divided-brain-model into the press with no success so far. It seems a waste to simply file them away. More to come from the past and, I expect more in the future. What holds the United States together? This question has become very important in the face of the many rifts that have cropped up recently. The answer is not, as many might say, patriotism or nationalism or any other ideology. The glue lies in the many powers, rights, or duties that have been explicitly created through the ratification… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh
My wife and I had a conversation a few days ago about wisdom. It’s not an easy question. How can you tell whether or when someone is wise? Is it something about them that hangs in there? My response was very pragmatic. Wisdom shows up after the fact in the assessment of whatever action, often involving some guidance to another, was taken. Did it fit the circumstances, beyond anything routine? Routines are the opposite of wise acts they always fit, by definition of the word routine. Wisdom only shows up when the going gets tough and our routines fail us.… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Power of Mindfulness
The Buddhist sage, Thich Nhat Hanh, died this week. Arthur Brooks wrote a moving tribute to him in the Washington Post on January 23, 2022 focused on his contributions to bringing mindfulness to our largely sound asleep Western world. I have excerpted a number of paragraphs from Brooks’s article because they contain extroordinary clear connections to McGilchrist’s divided-brain-model. Mindfulness corresponds to moments when the right hemisphere is connecting us to the real world or, as Hanh writes, to the “present moment.” The opposite situation, where the left hemisphere is in command, is captured in the references to “exist[ing] outside the… Read More
Continue ReadingA Response to David Brooks
Here is yet another rejected oped piece, this one by the NYTimes. I wrote this in response to a David Brooks oped, headlined, “America Is Falling Apart at the Seams,” (click here to see it). He pointed to all the asocial events going on in the US, but could not identify any reason. That was the main thrust of his piece. My attempt to provide a good reason didn’t make it into the editorial pages. How can we, who think we have a solid clue to explain and repair our badly damaged social system, crack the wall that prevents the… Read More
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