The Way to The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist
The way I found Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s work was actually through a podcast called The Great Simplification by Nate Hagens. That podcast is about how energy, climate change, and the economy all intersect. I really liked how insightful the information was — that it wasn’t just talking about how we need to take action and protest against oil companies. It was a more nuanced take on how the world works. Ultimately, no matter if the oil companies are reaping in major profits, we still need energy to survive, to power our homes, to go to work. So, just because we need to stop oil companies doesn’t get to the core of the issue. The core of the issue is that we are deeply intertwined financially and physically with the production of oil that there isn’t an easy way to stop the emission of things that are harming the environment no matter how much we mean well about the situation. Meanwhile, Capitalism is in the background, making it financially impossible to justify picking the “green” solution. That was a big revelation for me, that we are in a bind.
I thought that was it! I thought I finally found my path because Nate Hagens’ work felt so honest, good, and true. And it is! I came upon Daniel Schmachtenberger’s work through Hagens’ podcast next. I feel like Schmachtenberger is a big picture thinker of today’s global problems. Mainly, he works to frame and describe the metacrisis, which is a phenomenon where because our technology is so advanced it has the ability to significantly negatively change our planet like never before and that there are multiple sectors where this could happen (e.g. nuclear weapons, AI, biophysical weapons, etc.). More bad news.
I wanted more of Schmachtenberger’s content and found the Rebel Wisdom podcast and through that, I finally came upon Dr. Iain McGilchrist’s episodes and his work, mainly his book The Master and His Emissary. I think anyone who has read his books will say that his work has changed their lives. And I am no different. It felt as if McGilchrist’s works is the overarching concept of what Hagens and Schmachtenberger are getting at. This feeling that we are stuck, that there is no easy way out of the global predicaments that we have gotten ourselves into, McGilchrist’s work perfectly explains why. And it has everything to do with the way we are as humans.
There are two perspectives that we see the world through, one view from the left hemisphere of our brains and the other from the right. He says:
I believe the essential difference between the right hemisphere and the left is that the right hemisphere pays attention to the Other, what it is that exists apart from ourselves, with which it sees itself in profound relation. It is deeply attracted to, and given life by, the relationship, the betweenness, that exists with this Other. By contrast, the left hemisphere pays attention to the virtual world that it has created, which is self-consistent, but self-contained, ultimately disconnected from the Other, making it powerful, but ultimately only able to operate on, and to know, itself. (McGilchrist, 2019)
I believe a lot of our problems stem from the fact that we think our left hemisphere technologies will be the savior to our predicaments when really it digs a deeper hole. AI, for example. How many articles have you read that talks about how promising this new technology will be? How many corporations are racing to gain first mover advantage to this technology? Another one is the loneliness epidemic in part caused by the invention of the smartphone and social media apps. How easy is it to get on social media instead of real face-to-face time with friends who will nurture your soul in the long run. We overdo it with our technologies and more importantly, our left hemisphere.
McGilchrist’s description of the right hemisphere has the solution to our problems. The right hemisphere is concerned with the relationship — the connectedness — to the Other or to the Sacred. It seeks out unity and knows that there is more to the Whole than just the sum of its parts. There is far more to be said about this topic which can be found in McGilchrist’s books. This way of thinking really touched me and rang true in me. It gave language to something that I felt like I knew all along. Not only that, but McGilchrist emphasizes that the way we “attend” to the world makes us see it in a certain way. This is important because if we keep seeing the world through our left hemisphere, then everything is separate parts, disconnected, a resource to be used. If only we just shift our focus to view it through our right hemispheres, what a world we could make. I believe even just reading McGilchrist’s descriptions of the right and left hemispheres would do wonders to how people live their lives. The fact that we don’t know our right hemispheres at all juxtaposed with the fact that we’ve had substantial left hemesphere training all through school and work creates the mindsets (and problems) that we have today.
Mcgilchrist, I. (2019). The Master and His Emissary : The Divided brain and The Making of the Western World. Yale University Press.