“Humanity’s next great evolutionary leap will be the discovery that cooperating is better than competing” Pietro Ubaldi.
The one thing that characterizes the birth of great civilizations, and also, the fall of them, is how they approached problem solving – thinking in general changed between the beginning and the downfalls. At the start of great civilizations was a explosive ‘flowering’ of ideas and innovation. This is a result of whole brain processing. I have said before (e.g. see links 1, 2, 3, and 4) about the differences between Left and right brains within our skulls. In an ideal world, we would all be thinking from a whole brain perspective – that is we use both hemispheres when processing information about the reality of our world.
We don’t have too much in the way of recorded history since most of our recorded history with any detail at all only goes back to the Greeks. We have the physical remains (building) and written records (e.g., Mayan, Egyptian, Sumerian) but have to surmise how they were thinking at those times. Yet, we can deduce that they followed a similar pattern as we are doing now since the Medieval Rennaisance. In a nutshell, great thinkers (whole brainers?) created the magnificent civilizations, and were then usurped by bureaucratic requirements of trying to maintain control of growing empires. In essence, they went from whole brain thinking to left hemisphere dominance. That may be putting it simply, but eminent researchers (like Dr Iain McGilchrist, Psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar) have spoken eloquently about divided brain theory.
This theory argues that the simplistic way of looking at the brain’s hemispheres with logical left and creative right in nature is flawed and that it is how the brain processes reality in fundamentally different ways. The left is more detail-oriented and the right is whole-oriented, but more importantly, in an ideal situation, both hemispheres work collaboratively in defining our reality. What Gilchrist (and others) argue is that when bureaucratic processing takes over as a cultural priority, peoples’ behaviors and actions shift from creativity and dynamic processes towards social orders that favor details, set processes, reductions, and mechanizations. One end-result of this kind of shift is that we start looking at the world differently from a whole world of interconnection to one of manipulation and control. Look at nearly everything we do to resolve global problems involves yet another technology of control.
This all occurs subconsciously and changes over time so that the shift in conscious thinking is unnoticed. Most of our subconscious thinking is unnoticed and occurs independent of our conscious thinking mind. After all you do not need to think about breathing unless you are in a situation where breath is restricted. All your bodies metabolic functions occur subconsciously, but can be influenced by conscious thinking as in mediation. I believe that global culture at this time is struggling with so many people waking up and realizing just how much this thinking of the past two centuries has taken us down a dark road to perdition as our world becomes more and more ‘soul-less’ and technologically driven. The rise of artificial intelligence as a technological dream of the elite technocrats expresses this well.
This opening passage from Iain McGilchrist’s website says it all: “I believe that we are engaged in committing suicide: intellectual suicide, moral suicide and physical suicide. If there is anything as important as stopping us poisoning our seas and destroying our forests, it is stopping us poisoning our minds and destroying our souls.
Our dominant value – sometimes I fear our only value – has, very clearly, become that of power. This aligns us with a brain system, that of the left hemisphere, the raison d’être of which is to control and manipulate the world. But not to understand it: that, for evolutionary reasons that I explain, has come to be more the raison d’être of our – more intelligent, in every sense – right hemisphere. Unfortunately, the left hemisphere, knowing less, thinks it knows more. It is a good servant, but a ruinous – a peremptory – master. And the predictable outcome of assuming the role of master is the devastation of all that is important to us – or should be important, if we really know what we are about.
Even if we could, by some miracle, reverse the course on which we are set, unless we change our way of thinking, of being in the world – the way that is destroying us as we speak – it would all be in vain. This is why I have written the last long book I will ever write: The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World. In it I search out what it is we have lost sight of, all that is there for us to see, if only we were not blinded to it: an inexhaustibly, truly wondrous, creative, living universe, not a meaningless, moribund mechanism. By bringing to bear up-to-the-minute neuropsychology, physics and philosophy, I show not only that these are in no way in conflict with one another, but that they all lead us, time and again, to the same insights. And that this is not in opposition to, but rather corroborates, the wisdom of the great spiritual traditions across the world.
All this converges on a vision that is necessary if we are to survive; and, even more importantly, if we are to deserve to survive. What I hope for my readers is that, if they are willing to accompany me on this adventure, they will never see the world in quite the same way again.”
McGilchrist alludes to the need for a more spiritual look at the world, one that embraces wholeness – recognizes the interconnection of all life and not the compartmentalized, reductionist view of it all. I see this in my healthcare at this time. My allopathic doctors, through their left-hemispheric conditioning and learning, see me as a primary symptom to be controlled or with the symptom under management. My Osteopath and Nutritionist on the other hand, look at the whole body and see my primary symptom as a by-product of another problem completely, and together we are working to balance my whole-body system to resolve the primary symptom, not just manage it. My osteopath is not threatened by the allopathic system and uses it as needed, but the allopathic medics have been taught allopathic medicine is the only way to treat illness and disease. This stems back to the early 1900s when John D. Rockefeller supported an allopathic approach to medicine because he saw a mechanistic way of converting crude oil into drugs. Notably, while he highly supported allopathic medicine (and the many new medical schools funded through his drive), he also funded the campaign to destroy naturopathic medicine, even though his primary physician was an osteopath!
This medical mindset is typical of nearly all areas of modern technology that now control our world. Having taught ‘traditional’ Biology and Environmental Science for so many years, I understand all too well how the mechanistic-reductionist mindset works. I had a hard time in academia because I am a whole brain thinker and was too often shut-down by well-meaning colleagues when I questioned left-brain assumptions that right-brain thinking saw as problems. I am hopeful, because in many areas of academia, such as quantum physics, the ‘new’ biology and ecology, the idea of interconnectedness is growing. Whether it can infiltrate into mainstream thinking before we ruin the planet, and our ability to thrive on it, is to be seen. I believe we will, hence the sequence of Espe stories (Pathways to a better future, beginning December 2022)
Once you truly recognize interconnectedness you see the world differently. We all have a critical part in moving this idea forward. It will be Glorious if we succeed. It’s why I promote a spiritual mindset for resolving our global problems. We need to let our right-hemispheres come back into helping us see the world as an interconnected whole in which we work alongside all life, and not a myriad set of isolated systems to be analyzed, manipulated, and controlled. As famous outdoor advocate, naturalist, and preservationist John Muir said at the turn of the century around 1900, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, [he/she] finds it attached to the rest of the world,” and “The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.” Finding inner peace is as simple, and yet as hard, as looking inward and perceiving the world differently. But it resolve humanity’s psychic darkness and trauma takes a conscious decision to begin that work – and we need to begin now!
“In order for the teachings of mystical spirituality to come true in your life, you must make them the central force in your life. You must center your life around them and infuse them into every aspect of your life” Muata Ashby
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