A Revolution in Thought? - Dr Iain McGilchrist
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- Опубліковано 12 лют 2024
- A Revolution in Thought? How hemisphere theory helps us understand the metacrisis
It is often remarked that though it may seem that we face numerous global crises of different kinds - environmental, social, political, cultural, economic, psychological, and so on - these crises are interrelated. The term ‘metacrisis’ has been invented to describe this predicament. However these crises are not merely adventitiously interrelated because each has an impact on and reinforces each of the others - though that may be true - but because they share roots at a deeper level in a way of thinking about ourselves and the world. What are these roots? Hemisphere theory, deeply grounded as it is in Darwinism and subsequent neuroscientific research, shows us that a new, far more complex, and more nuanced, appraisal of the bipartite brain - the product of the last 30 years of research - brings new insights into the human condition. There are vitally important clues to the understanding of human cognition and motivation embodied in the structure of the brain. These clues help explain why certain apparently unrelated phenomena tend to occur together, why outcomes that appear paradoxical are in reality predictable, and why many attempts to remedy them will prove inadequate since they are tackling only the manifestations of a problem that we need to address at its root - both in the psyche of the individual and that of a civilisation viewed as a whole. ‘Know thyself’ commanded the Delphian oracle: we need urgently to learn to do so, and this synergy of philosophy and neuroscience appears to offer the most promising way.
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. He is the author of a number of books, but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009); and his book on neuroscience, epistemology and ontology, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (Perspectiva 2021).
That's the best single summation of the modern world problem I've heard.
funny it comes from a brain research
McGilchrist sure has something to say, but it needs to be translated to something possible to digess for the masses.
@@karakoima huh, that could be an interesting challenge. Any thoughts on what form that might take?
That lecture should be broadcast on every media channel world wide, in every country in every language.
The hemisphere theory is silly, tho. Isn't it? Surely you don't take his hemisphere theory seriously. Do you?
@@suzettedarrow8739 Ah, well, suzette certainly blew that lecture out of the water, didn't she! Nothing to nuke learning, experience, inquiry and exploration like a snarky thread comment, huh! I suppose they'll take this video down now that Suzette's arrow-like voice has pierced the fog for the ages.
you gotta understand that on the internet it pays to speak in provacative language. i can back up my skepticism.@@kensears5099
@@kensears5099
Maybe we stick around and see how it does ; ages ,that is.
😉
@@siyaindagulag. Agreed!
It took great courage to speak in such terms to that audience. Thank you and bravo Iain.
Never discount the power of synopsis
What? Why should that audience object? Go speak it to a working class high school audience, or to people in a factory.
Surely one of the most important minds and voices of our time.
Brilliant and profoundly moving.
Iain is a modern day intellectual warrior, with a heart to match.
I'm both uplifted and depressed, simultaneously, by listening to him speak: uplifted because his command of language and subtle insights are always a joy to witness; depressed because it is painfully apparent just how far we are from achieving the kind of transformation we so desperately need.
I fear the full extent of the metacrisis has yet to reveal itself and we must continue to suffer under a failed paradigm for a good while yet.
The analogy that comes to mind is the obsessive (left hemisphere dominated?) Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons, who runs off the cliff in pursuit of his quarry, but doesn't begin to fall until he looks down and sees the yawning void below.
That sudden irruption of awareness is the right hemisphere, finally being acknowledged - in Coyote's case, too late.
Go say that to people of working class roots
We are not far. Gilchrist is brilliant and worth listening to, but he is also stuck in the old patterns of thinking that led us into the troubling times we are in. He is a Newtonian, not an Einsteinian thinker. Gilchrist is able to analyse, but he nonetheless misses the point, namely that there are underlying thought forms and patterns that dictates how we are programmed to think. It isn't the analysis of ourselves that has killed beauty. It is the a priori thought form of utilitarianism and capitalisation of biology that is the problem, because these frameworks for our perception of reality leads us into believing that for anything having value, we must be able to allocate meaning and value to it through money or usefulness in a commercial setting. There's the hinge he should have been looking at.
Iain is an important voice, thank you for making this lecture so widely available. I wish more people would watch it!
Come the hour, cometh the man.
His work...a gift,most appreciated.
A truly great intellectual and human being, his stature will grow with time.
I've been reading The Master & His Emissary, reading it slowly and actually highlighting and then copying certain passages into a private journal by hand because I think it's one of the most important books I've ever read. When I was in high school, I took a class in calligraphy and had many after-class discussions with my teacher on various subjects. At one point, I asked him for some advice on living my life and his advice was "Seek to become a Renaissance man", which he defined as developing both hemispheres of my brain as much as possible. So Dr. McGilchrist's book is particularly personal to me.
Steve Jobs study of calligraphy was crucial to his development, and Apple's early focus.
@@KL0098 I will take that chance. You can live in fear of the unknown and call it "skepticism" if you like. It's your life. But there is no "we" going on here.
@@KL0098
My calligraphy teacher advised me to devote my life to developing both sides of my brain. He used the term "Renaissance Man" to characterize this. You are now nitpicking over how accurate that term is.
Who cares? What a petty argument.
The meaningful part is developing both sides of the brain. BOTH sides. This has nothing to do with "assurances of received ideas". So no, you're quite wrong. And I am wondering what you think you're accomplishing with your argument. After all, I'm only describing a focal point in MY life. You're the one using the term "we", like my focus is a threat to everyone else. What's up with that?
I am a great fan of Dr McGilchrist, as much for his style as his substance, views expressed calmly, unlike the 'shouty, shouty world' we are currently forced to endure.
I agree I love listening to his beautiful calm voice. If only people in government spent some time listening to each other.
Exactly. Thank you for your comment. It is quite extraordinary nowadays to hear a person calmly explaining his points.
His knowledge includes psychiatry, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology, poetry, literature, and history. Whew!!
I am a neuropsychologist but I am not at his level.
WOW! The more I listen to Dr. McGilchrist the more I respect him. He consistently expresses views that hold such a deep and accurate understanding of the true underlying cause of things. In other words, he often speaks from true wisdom. I have learned to be very attentive to every word he utters.
I am even more excited to finish one of the books I am reading so that I can start his book The Master and His Emissary.
Above all the brilliance, what a wonderful human being...
I truly believe Ian’s theory is possibly the greatest realisation in the world.
At the same time it’s always been obvious, just not clearly marked
Reading other sources while keeping his theory nearby as an anchor, it becomes rather deeply convincing. My interest turned to the question: if one juxtaposes the hemisphere theory with cognitive anthropology, what might one find?
@@Am33304Jeff, would you mind paraphrase what is that, that you are asking?
@@Am33304oh, thank you for clarifying :)
In a nutshell, Ian's theory proposes that there is an ontological difference in attention; the way one attains to existence and to self. Attention given by the right hemisphere will be different from the left given attention. Holism vs reductionism.
A disclaimer must follow, as both hemispheres are working at all times; often enough, however, dominance of the left hemisphere is exercised. Ian goes arm length further and proposes that today's way of living, which stems out of attention that is dominated by the left (reductive) hemisphere thinking and vision.
Stepping out of this theory and going back to what I postulated, it seems to me that there is a constant dynamical trade-off of type of attention that implicitly embedded through-out history of human kind.
Hunter-gatherers, for example, must have prioritized right hemisphere attention while using left hemispheric attention for surgical operations (food hunting and habitat construction and re-construction). Civil orchestration (egalitarianism) can only happen when attention is exercised by the right hemisphere and patrolled by the left. The prioritization happened naturally for their ecological and social ontology were utterly different from the one moderns know.
Pardon for leaked enthusiasm of mine and over simplification.
@@Am33304 Very much so. :)
If we take the "hemisphere theory" seriously, we must then presuppose sound grounding for the belief that there is indeed another way to pay attention to, for lack of more precise terminology, existence. Now, the immediate response to that is: what is that other way? What does it even mean? Where does one look to even define what that way of attention, the one employed at this very second, is? Does it feel like something? Does it have a different cognitive structure, given that cognition is a dynamical system?
Never-mind the invitation to include the phenomenological aspect in the inquiry; for if one does so, things become transparently obvious, if I can put it in such a way without sounding ambiguous, so forgive me, but language here limits me.
As far as the ever-morphing synthesis, which I am able to hold somewhat accurately, goes, it brings one to tautology; to the shallow-waters. For instance, yes, different cognition leads to a very different apprehension of 'all', since again, cognition is a dynamical system; a change in one variable leads to a shift in the entire system (depending on the strength, of course).
What is the workshop of yours is about?
This is one of your clearest and most compelling presentations.
Well done, sir.
God bless you Dr McGilchrist for your work as well as for the abundance of new lectures
I've listened to many hours of McGilchrist, but this is the best speech, outstanding.
he just reads from a paper, ths is no speech.
@@Vedicvibesorg Traditionally, speeches are actually read from paper, though sometimes not.
well that is very 19th century....perhaps the splendid isolation helped to conserve such a tradition....@@robertalenrichter
So, you listened to this presentation and this was the comment you thought best summarised it@@Vedicvibesorg? It really does seem you can lead a horse to water...
thanks I think that would be possible for me...@@druidjuicer636
Thank you for this wonderful and beautiful lecture. My heart warms to this man.
Iain McGilchrist is in my pantheon of gods. Thanks for this!
I have read both Iain’s books and I am rereading The Matter With Things. Further I have probably watched many 10 of hours of his talks and debates. In his last few appearances he seems to have become better at describing his splendid takes on the modern world. He now presents a much clearer picture of the implications for mainly Western societies, for us as individuals and what we can do to respond as individuals. Respond in a way to experience a richer, more colourful and fulfilling life.
I am by no means academic or even particularly bright, holding a single degree theses days means very little. What I do find surprising and a little sad is that so few public figures, media types, politicians or educators have any idea who Iain is or how his ideas merit a much greater airing. It seems to me that much of society (and many of my friends and family) seem belligerently blind to the idea that improving our lot starts with oneself, inside ones head and heart on a journey towards the ‘holy’. I see so many folk protesting or lobbying or law making falling foul of their left hemispheres.
Have just started the second volume of TMWthings ....what a work! I am old enough to remember something of what is lost...a ground that needs recovering.
Thank you. Well put. 🙏
See how many people flinch the moment you mention the world virtue? They perceive that as you shining a light on their vices, because they have no virtues to speak of.
I can't explain how profoundly moving this is, so eloquent, clear and inspiring, spoken with such compassion and humility.
Epic! A prodigious lecture! Required viewing! One of the clearest, most eloquent, thoughtful and positively truthful summations of our current predicament I've ever heard and brothers and sisters, I've heard a lot of them. Been in the Metacrisis game for decades now (way before it was called that by the inimitable group at The Consilience Project, we just called it THE MACHINE, see Orwell and such). An incredible speech from a kaleidoscopic mind. One of the greatest minds of our time. Such a gift to hear you speak, Dr. McGilchrist. Thank you, thank you, thank you, a million times thank you! Please share with everyone.
Прекраснейшая лекция.Спасибо.Во мне вы пробудиши чувство,что не всё ещё потеряно..
и ещё не все потеряны...есть люли думающие..и мысшящие.
Ian’s multi- and inter-disciplinary intellect is a desperately needed one in the so called modern era. In fact the emergence of a voice like his is IMO not lucky or timely coincidence, but most likely a result or even one last synergistic attempt by the greater system of our human culture to save us from this meta crisis and the spiraling down the left hemisphere’s dark hole, by producing an intellect capable of articulating the inarticulate, trying desperately bringing us back on a healing path of synthesis between the two hemispheres.
Thank you Iran for being that intellect. Your contributions to humanity will be remembered for centuries to come, lest we succumb to this meta crisis.
The first and only meta-lecture.
Iain has just kicked another door wide open on my journey of self discovery and human understanding. Taking the time to comment after my second time listening to this Lecture. Thank you Iain.
Wonderful and greatly appreciated. Thank you so very much! I always add to "Know Thyself" also Love Thyself.
Yes! And in that the growing of understanding and practice of love in its deepest essence and meaning. Check out Rudolf Steiner s insights on the interpendent connections between love and "Erkenntnis", the act of coming to know...
This angel has a wonderful empathy God bless you always
Life and people decoded. Brilliant.
As a right-hemisphere dominant person, i understand Iain McGilchrist and totally agree with him.
Have you finished 6th grade?
@infiniteshoeblackGotta be careful with "lefty" though. Easy to confuse with politics, US in particular. The US political right is even more left-brained than the postmodern-idiocy driven left. And of course trump is the quintessential "pure left-hemispheric" psychopathic narcissist. The most remarkably hideous since You-know-who and Voldemort. No "beauty, goodness and truth" within coooee, as we say in Oz. 🦘🙃🦘 All reductionist materialism. "Ontological primitives" indeed. But not on the side of any virtue whatsoever.
@infiniteshoeblackAristotle vs Plato …
You never seen that cartoon telling you not to think, how easy it is to mindlessly process grammar and words.
Well done, Iain -- well done.
Another gem from Mr McGilchrist!
Very enjoyable lecture and worth several reviews. I laughed at the last few minutes, at 67, I frequently reflect on how much there is to learn and yet all that matters is the experience of life. The only possible response is one of Wonder and Gratitude for the opportunity we are given.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." -- Charles Darwin
Iian is, IMHO the greatest consolidator of current social conditions and the movement towards the destruction of balanced life. The loss of beauty, Love and truth to a left brain machine. We ignore this understanding at our peril. Thank you Dr Mcgililcrest
Well put yourself!
Brilliantly perceptive and articulated. Thank you for this.
Bravo. Well said…Gratitude 🙏
How can we turn off politicians' left hemisphere
Thoughtful. Thank you, Dr Iain.
amazing! what a beautiful and courageous speech!!!!!
The most accurate synopsis of the unabomber manifesto ive ever heard. Thank you sir.
Good afternoon Darwin College and Iain
Again super Sensemaking Sense, indeed.
Truly grateful for your work.
Sanity brain gym.
💜
Superb Iain. I am oh-so encouraged X
Dr Iain McGilchrist has brought me to that very place fromwhere i know what to do ! Thanks !
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏❤️ Iain. Love to Iain. Thank you to your university. We need what you did in platforming him. Thank you to all. 👏👏👏👏
Thank you Dr. McGilchrist for a deeply moving and thought provoking lecture.
Thank you again, Dr. Iian McGilchrist, for your depths of meaning, your wisdom , lectures, and books bring light to all in various fields and to all of us who seek a different path for the betterment of humanity.
🙏❤️🌏🌿🕊🎵🎶🎵
I am astonished by the critical insight and depth of humanity in this; to be embraced with utmost urgency.
Share, share and share again! Phenomenal lecture.
The era of great and humble men is not yet ended. Bravo!
Compelling, heartfelt and very human. Inspiring is an overused word but this lecture truly is.
Thanks, Dr. McGilchrist's thinking is such a treat.
magnficent reading.... magnificent
Amazing! Thank you !!
Great lecture ! Thank you.
Thank you.
This lecture is like an inside beautiful fire to warm up our right hemisphere … thank you for your words and sharing.
Incredible speech, thank you.
Totally brilliant
Yes it’s magnificent awesome presentation of human for humanities. Thank you for your generosity of sharing your life’s work .
It was beautiful good and true!!
Profound summation of all the crises that beset us
Truly outstanding lecture and he is so brave as he tackles our new found problems in society with such eloquence.
Wonderful. Yes, I have seen this need also.
An important voice today.
Stunning❤
Bravo!
This is the guy future generations will hopefully be writing and learning about like we did with Freud or Wittgenstein.
This is superb!
A simply wonderful lecture. I cried.
Well done, Iain! Spot on. Human Ecology at its best. It's such a relief to hear an intellectual broadening the parameters of thinking by relating it to the 'Meta-Crisis". The one we are drowning ourselves in, and killing off the Natural World. Thank you for what you do.
What a speech! It gave me the courage back I've been depleted over the years in this crazy time. Let's flourish the good, beauty and truth, communion and trust, nature and spirituality. For all we know - let's go beyond.
Brilliant!!
Wisdom, thank you Ian
"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine the can design." F. A. Hayek. THE FATAL CONCEIT.
Yes complacency at the end of the world. But the ASMR here is magnificent.
Great chat, thank you!
Lots of food for thought in there.
I’ve been comparing your thought with the “Integral” philosophy of Ken Wilbur. A very different style to be sure but in common a rediscovery of ‘the Sacred” and the spiritual but within a framework that doesn’t suppress the body: both spiritual and embodied at once, that’s what we need today! The problem is: will anyone listen?
Of course a major difference is that KW presents an intellectually attractive model that is not grounded in physical reality (in the sense of an uninterrupted continuum from physics to chemistry to biology to philosophy - he tries to synthesise at a "meta" level of consciousness), whereas McG's model is not only "grounded in" reality physically (in the brain) but is emergent from it. Not just philosophically attractive in its regularity and not needing to create postulates of consciousness that are basically impossible to explain, ultimately, but in McG's worldview inescapable as a result of its embededness, which he CAN explain, causally. 🙏
@@T-aka-T yes and that’s a great strength for it! Mind you Wilbur would say he has included physical reality in his “Four Quadrants”; but that remains a theoretical construct in the end.
I can't thank him enough.
excellent talk
I add antagonism as a cultural habit. It blocks reflection and pushes contagion.
Here's a ChatGPT summary:
Dr. Iain McGilchrist discusses the importance of understanding the brain's hemispheric differences.
- He emphasizes that the left hemisphere is focused on manipulation, while the right hemisphere understands the contextual whole.
- The left hemisphere's narrow beam attention is contrasted with the right hemisphere's broad, vigilant, and uncommitted attention.
- McGilchrist argues that the left hemisphere's dominance in Western culture has led to a loss of direction and value.
- He notes that the left hemisphere is seductive and offers simple answers, which can be addictive and misleading.
- The left hemisphere's worldview is easier to articulate, leading to its dominance in public discourse.
- McGilchrist suggests that the left hemisphere is delusional when operating independently, often denying inconvenient truths.
- He traces historical patterns of cultural flourishing and decline, linking them to hemispheric dominance.
- The lecture explores the paradoxes of modern life, such as the pursuit of happiness leading to less happiness.
- McGilchrist calls for a change in hearts and minds, not just actions, to address the metacrisis facing society.
- He recommends cultivating awe and wonder, compassion, and a recognition of our limited knowledge as steps toward healing.
- The lecture concludes with an appreciation for the complexity and beauty of the cosmos and the potential for human greatness.
- Main message: The dominance of the left hemisphere's mode of being in Western culture has led to a crisis of meaning and value, and a shift towards a more balanced hemispheric understanding is necessary for personal fulfillment, societal flourishing, and addressing the metacrisis.
Thank you. Brilliant! Now if only I can get my academic colleagues to listen :)
Brilliant!
That's it. Amen!
Yes, Love (of Life) against the Machine (of lusts...). I've never heard more beautiful speech in my life, thank you Sir. 🙏
As relates to theoretical physics (and believe it or not, I’ve been saying this for years before I knew of Iain’s brilliant work) there is no “particle/wave duality,” only two different ways of looking at things.
Most of what you are being told about as dualities are merely false dichotomy fallacies. Particle wave duality is one of those, but it's not something that comes from theoretical physics. Dirac, one of the best theoretical physicists in history, has pointed this out in the early 1930s and even the most cursory look at any physics library (or even at a high school science textbook) will confirm that he was right. So where does this fallacy live? It lives mostly in the layman literature and now on the internet.
@@lepidoptera9337mind to provide citation? Would love to explore his thought.
Thanks! A Speech on the magnitude of Solzhenitsyn. As he says "The Truth is seldom pleasant, in fact it is invariably bitter."
Best thing I've ever experienced.
one of Ian's best. Consider being part of that 3%
ah - moral - is it the moral that someone stamped on us or is it the moral that is free and is your own- the quality of the free moral is an imagination that captures the worlds attention because it is new.
But you went in such great detail!
Profound. 🤔
As a cognitive therapist my work has predominantly become about working with individuals to integrate the right hemisphere back into the whole and anchoring that as a new way of being. They come for solutions and yet the solution os never known by the left hemisphere. As for the individual, as for society. I have long made the argument that this approach is the one way… and in my opinion is at odds with much of the current mental health protocols - which are left hemisphere solutions to left hemisphere problems. Iain, thank you for describing something that most elude to in daily conversations, but fail to coherently understand the importance of our insights.
So true, a logical look at truth ❤
Mighty fine.
How good it is to see an academic in an academic gown!
Nice lecture, it dawned on me that even using the terms right and left hemisphere are very left hemisphere.
It's fascinating that what he starts describing in some detail about the midpoint of this lecture relates to our western societies much more than the eastern cultures....
Watch a documentary about the state of the environment in modern-day India & China. Nothing is sacred to any country's "elites" anymore.
More than being productive, the purpose is to be fruitful. Que cierto !! Ironico que esta extraordinaria ponencia, haya sido dada en el Darwin College en Cambridge.
A very good and brave lecture in today's cultural environment. I would humbly recommend everyone who liked it to consider reading Erich Fromm's work. He talked wisely about these self same matters in the mid- 20th century and seems to be oddly unappreciated now. I'd recommend his book 'The Sane Society' as a good starting point.
A change of "heart" must happen. Most rational arguments simply serve to back up already internalized, unquestioned assumptions based on deeoly and dearly held beliefs.
Much to transcribe and retain: Max "Sheler" versus /sha/ or /Shaylar/... owing to the caption-challenged offering; regardless, an exquisitely detailed and defined reflection, nonetheless. (*the reading stacks expand*).
"Artists" can see and feel the crisis, what the speaker calls a "metacrisis," each and every day and it is utterly overwhelming. Too many are losing touch with the gestalt, with the intuitive; and, oppressive control and acquisition of narrow focused symbolic materiality is taking it's place, fixated ideation and identity.
There are those who have no idea as to what I am referring but that is an indication of the impoverishment implicit in the problem. They have lost the ability to think outside of the box but instead have thought themselves into a box of their own creation, and it is destroying them and us.
Perceptive and well articulated.