The split of the human brain into a left and a right hemisphere has a profound impact on how we perceive reality. Unfortunately a lot of the oversimplifications about the left brain being responsible for reason and language while the right brain being responsible for emotions and visual imaging have proven to be inaccurate. Even though these functions seem to be distributed across the entire brain neuroscience was able to allocate certain capabilities to each of the hemispheres.
Left hemisphere :
- Providing a simplified representation of reality with a narrow focus on those details that have been previously identified as being of importance
- Mechanical aspects of reality are coded here
- Sees the body as an assemblage of parts
- Dependant on abstraction
- Yields clarity and power to manipulate things that are known, fixed, static, isolated, explicit and lifeless
Right hemisphere :
- Vigilant and broadly open to any perceptions which are different from our expectations and thus might indicate an unknown threat
- Sees things in context
- Understands implicit meaning (metaphor, body language)
- More integrated with the body and the external world
- Responsible for feeling connected to other people and establishing bonds
- Yields a world of individual, changing, evolving, interconnected, implicit, living beings
- Can never fully grasp the explicit nature of reality - an element of the unknown always remains
Asymmetries of the brain
The asymmetries of the brain gives us a very peculiar perception of the world. Especially the Cropus Callosum which connects both hemispheres plays an important role in balancing them leading to a synthesis of both contraversial viewpoints. While the Cropus Callosum provides the mechanical link the Frontal Lobe - which makes up 35% of the entire brain - has the task to inhibit immediate responses of the more instict driven parts of the brain. This allows us to stand back in time and space from the situation we experience and make sense of it in a bigger context allowing for a smarter reaction.
Implications for Western culture
In Western culture we can observe a clear imbalance between both hemispheres which lead to a glorification of the left brain's viewpoint : We prefer the virtual over the real, we worship anything technical, bureaucracy is spreading rapidly but our entire picture of reality remains fragmented. It has become more important how we do something instead of first asking why we do it. The need for control leads to a form of paranoia that spreads through the system resulting in a desire to make everything explicit - even things which should remain implicit by nature. By these processes all life is drained.
Why did we experience this form of imbalance ?
- The talk of the left hemisphere is very convincing because it simply neglects all aspects that do not fit with its model of reality. This model of reality is entirely self-consistent simply because it made itself so
- The right hemisphere does not have a voice of its own that could construct similar explicit and convincing arguments like the left hemisphere
- The more we have become imbalanced the more self-reinforcing the entire process has become because we ignore more and more exactly any aspects that could have lead to a correction.
Since it is the right hemisphere that is capable of warning us about anything unknown that might be creeping up on us we might really have to begin listening again to what it might be trying to tell us. Any creative solutions to the global problems will have to come from the right hemisphere because only it can see things in a broader context and can come up with ideas that will allow us to overcome the upcoming global challenges.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant, we have created a society that honors the servant but has forgotten the gift.
(Albert Einstein)
In case you found this article interesting you can watch a lecture by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist who wrote an entire book regarding his findings about this topic.
Additionally there is a second article available in the Knowledge Base which focuses more on the development of the brain and how the learning experiences reshape the physical structure of the brain during your entire lifetime.
