Love this, very helpful, ties in with things I have been exploring recently,
Feeling like you have to be sure, you have to be certain your not self is telling you there is no room for doubt. That can be paralysing in the world we live in, we live in a world that prioritizes rational, logical, mental processing, that is what the not self is going to tell you need to do. It will tell you that you are just wrong in general, wrong for even existing if you are not sure about something, if you have doubt about something. The not self is never anybody’s authority, there is no need for anybody to be absolutely certain of anything, what the not self tries to tell us is a lie, it tries to convince us of something, it says you need to be certain. I don’t need to be certain, I don’t need to eliminate doubt, learn to get comfortable with doubt.
I think the need for certainty forever chains us to doubt and disconnects us from any deeper "knowing". It's a trap. It seems to be what you are describing here. Is it?
yes, I have been reading about the Divided Brain by Iain McGilchrist lately, who writes about for me what boils down to the parable of the blind men describing parts of an elephant. The left brain wants and thinks it has certainty about it's knowledge. The right brain takes that smalls piece of knowledge and integrates into a "big picture" that can never really be complete and certain but understands this at a deep level.
He talks about what happens when a society becomes left brain dominated,
what is actually currently going on in the world, and with the ideas, ideologies and cults which have come to dominate the West, is stark. Indeed, this vision of what a self-traumatizing society would look like, to my mind, could not be a more perfect description of the world we do currently live in.
“There would be a focus on material things at the expense of the living. Social cohesion, and the bonds between person and person, and just as importantly between person and place, the context in which each person belongs, would be neglected, perhaps actively disrupted, as both inconvenient and incomprehensible to the left hemisphere acting on its own. ”
“There would be a depersonalisation of the relationships between members of society, and in society’s relationship with its members. Exploitation rather than co-operation would be, explicitly or not, the default relationship between human individuals, and between humanity and the rest of the world.”
“Resentment would lead to an emphasis on uniformity, identification would be by categories: socioeconomic groups, races, sexes, and so on, which would also feel themselves to be implicitly or explicitly in competition with, resentful of, one another. Paranoia and lack of trust would come to be the pervading stance within society both between individuals, and between such groups, and would be the stance of government towards its people.”
“Reasonableness would be replaced by rationality, and perhaps the very concept of reasonableness might become unintelligible. There would be a complete failure of common sense, since it is intuitive and relies on both hemispheres working together.”
“Anger and aggressive behaviour would become more evident in our social interactions, since of all emotional states these are the most highly characteristic of the left hemisphere, and would no longer be counterbalanced by the empathic skills of the right hemisphere.”
“One would expect a loss of insight, coupled with an unwillingness to take responsibility, and this would reinforce the left hemisphere’s tendency to a perhaps dangerously unwarranted optimism. There would be a rise in intolerance and inflexibility, an unwillingness to change track or change one’s mind.”
“Above all, the word and the idea would come to dominate. Cultural history and tradition, and what can be learnt from the past, would be confidently dismissed in preparation for the systematic society of the future, put together by human will. The body would come to be viewed as a machine, and the natural world as a heap of resource to be exploited.”
Working backwards, can we see how some elected and unelected people in charge are very broken people, acting and thinking like folks with right hemisphere brain damage, whose agendas are bringing the Unmaking of the Western World about, and are, in turn, creating more and more extreme versions of themselves in the next generation through institutionalized trauma?
What can we do about it? A big barrier issue is that wanting definite solutions and an analytical “10 point plan” is inherently also a left hemisphere way of attending, and we can’t solve the problems with the same type of thinking which created them in the first place!
The big picture answer to interrupting the cascading or domino effect of right-hemisphere shutdown could include, firstly, awareness. We can begin to look at our institutions and the people which comprise them through the lens that McGilchrist has provided us with, and in particular, notice, and call out, when they are behaving like they have a right-hemisphere shutdown. We can not trust the delusional thinking arising from these people and places, and so should stop rewarding such folks and structures with our votes, voices, and our purchasing power.
The main answer, however, I feel, is to start to value again everything the right hemisphere way of attending stands for, as described in McGilchrist’s works. That is to embrace and embody the right hemisphere’s Ways to be our guiding Values and Vision for the world.
Love this, very helpful, ties in with things I have been exploring recently,
Feeling like you have to be sure, you have to be certain your not self is telling you there is no room for doubt. That can be paralysing in the world we live in, we live in a world that prioritizes rational, logical, mental processing, that is what the not self is going to tell you need to do. It will tell you that you are just wrong in general, wrong for even existing if you are not sure about something, if you have doubt about something. The not self is never anybody’s authority, there is no need for anybody to be absolutely certain of anything, what the not self tries to tell us is a lie, it tries to convince us of something, it says you need to be certain. I don’t need to be certain, I don’t need to eliminate doubt, learn to get comfortable with doubt.
I think the need for certainty forever chains us to doubt and disconnects us from any deeper "knowing". It's a trap. It seems to be what you are describing here. Is it?
yes, I have been reading about the Divided Brain by Iain McGilchrist lately, who writes about for me what boils down to the parable of the blind men describing parts of an elephant. The left brain wants and thinks it has certainty about it's knowledge. The right brain takes that smalls piece of knowledge and integrates into a "big picture" that can never really be complete and certain but understands this at a deep level.
He talks about what happens when a society becomes left brain dominated,
what is actually currently going on in the world, and with the ideas, ideologies and cults which have come to dominate the West, is stark. Indeed, this vision of what a self-traumatizing society would look like, to my mind, could not be a more perfect description of the world we do currently live in.
“There would be a focus on material things at the expense of the living. Social cohesion, and the bonds between person and person, and just as importantly between person and place, the context in which each person belongs, would be neglected, perhaps actively disrupted, as both inconvenient and incomprehensible to the left hemisphere acting on its own. ”
“There would be a depersonalisation of the relationships between members of society, and in society’s relationship with its members. Exploitation rather than co-operation would be, explicitly or not, the default relationship between human individuals, and between humanity and the rest of the world.”
“Resentment would lead to an emphasis on uniformity, identification would be by categories: socioeconomic groups, races, sexes, and so on, which would also feel themselves to be implicitly or explicitly in competition with, resentful of, one another. Paranoia and lack of trust would come to be the pervading stance within society both between individuals, and between such groups, and would be the stance of government towards its people.”
“Reasonableness would be replaced by rationality, and perhaps the very concept of reasonableness might become unintelligible. There would be a complete failure of common sense, since it is intuitive and relies on both hemispheres working together.”
“Anger and aggressive behaviour would become more evident in our social interactions, since of all emotional states these are the most highly characteristic of the left hemisphere, and would no longer be counterbalanced by the empathic skills of the right hemisphere.”
“One would expect a loss of insight, coupled with an unwillingness to take responsibility, and this would reinforce the left hemisphere’s tendency to a perhaps dangerously unwarranted optimism. There would be a rise in intolerance and inflexibility, an unwillingness to change track or change one’s mind.”
“Above all, the word and the idea would come to dominate. Cultural history and tradition, and what can be learnt from the past, would be confidently dismissed in preparation for the systematic society of the future, put together by human will. The body would come to be viewed as a machine, and the natural world as a heap of resource to be exploited.”
Working backwards, can we see how some elected and unelected people in charge are very broken people, acting and thinking like folks with right hemisphere brain damage, whose agendas are bringing the Unmaking of the Western World about, and are, in turn, creating more and more extreme versions of themselves in the next generation through institutionalized trauma?
What can we do about it? A big barrier issue is that wanting definite solutions and an analytical “10 point plan” is inherently also a left hemisphere way of attending, and we can’t solve the problems with the same type of thinking which created them in the first place!
The big picture answer to interrupting the cascading or domino effect of right-hemisphere shutdown could include, firstly, awareness. We can begin to look at our institutions and the people which comprise them through the lens that McGilchrist has provided us with, and in particular, notice, and call out, when they are behaving like they have a right-hemisphere shutdown. We can not trust the delusional thinking arising from these people and places, and so should stop rewarding such folks and structures with our votes, voices, and our purchasing power.
The main answer, however, I feel, is to start to value again everything the right hemisphere way of attending stands for, as described in McGilchrist’s works. That is to embrace and embody the right hemisphere’s Ways to be our guiding Values and Vision for the world.
Wow. Thank you for this description. Sadly, it feels very accurate.